Palestinian schools in occupied East Jerusalem face neglect

Many students meet in converted apartment buildings rather than structures designed as schoolhouses, Ben Lynfield reports.

Palestinian school children walk past Israeli riot police during clashes with masked youths on September 22, 2010. AFP Photo
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JERUSALEM // It is morning break at the Jebel Mukaber Secondary School for Boys in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem.

But none of the students are playing sports – the schoolyard does not have the space for that. Inside, the school is cold because there is no heating and some of the classrooms are dark because lights are broken. One classroom is only three metres wide, with pupils crammed into the tight space in rows of four.

Jebel Mukaber is one of many schools in East Jerusalem, illegally annexed by Israel in 1967, where students meet in converted apartment buildings rather than structures designed as schoolhouses. The condition of the school is part of a long-standing pattern of neglect in education and other services for Arabs, who are a third of the population in a city that Israel considers its “eternal, undivided capital”.

“This building is not qualified to be a school. It’s as if you are entering a cave,” says one teacher. “This depresses people. It’s like a prison. We are sitting in a prison. There is no exercise, no sport, the general condition is chaos.”

“There is no equipment to teach correctly,” he adds. “I need a projector to show students examples and to illustrate ideas but there is not one projector for this school.”

The school also lacks computers, a science lab and a library, basic features of schools in nearby Jewish West Jerusalem.

“I can’t blame the students if they don’t want to learn,’’ says another teacher, who asked to be identified by the initials TA. “If this was a Jewish school I could tell the kids go and research topics ... here there is no library. Many will fail and go into construction or work in restaurants.”

While Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat’s office says he has improved conditions in East Jerusalem in recent years, Palestinians say nothing has changed. Instead, they say conditions in some neighbourhoods have worsened.

Nahar Halaseh, an activist on the Jebel Mukaber parents committee, says residents have complained for years about the conditions at the high school and pleaded for a new one to the municipality and other government bodies.

But nothing has been done. “They are taking our taxes and giving us nothing. This is racist,” said Mr Halaseh.

On December 9, Israeli president Reuven Rivlin bluntly admitted that Israel had “abandoned” the welfare of East Jerusalem residents and sharply criticised authorities for not providing services.

"Does anyone think that dealing with the sewage, roads, schools and medical centres of East Jerusalem can or should wait until the end of the conflict?" he wrote in the Washington Post.

Amid a nearly three-month wave of violence across Jerusalem and the West Bank, dovish Israelis are linking the violence to discrimination in services to East Jerusalem.

“A lot of what’s happening is frustration from social and economic neglect,” says Laura Wharton, a city councillor from the left-wing Meretz party.

“There’s a lot of incitement and religious aspects that extremists are trying to bring in, but tensions are in part frustration over the difficult socio-economic situation and frustration of people who see huge gaps between west and east Jerusalem.”

The differences are not lost on pupils.

A twelfth-grader who aspires to become a sports teacher said: “We learn in these conditions because of the occupation and racism. Of course it makes me angry.”

TA, the teacher, said: “Why are schoolchildren carrying out attacks? Lack of hope. I hear from many kids that we don’t have a school here.”

In 2011, the supreme court ordered the municipality to create 1,000 classrooms in East Jerusalem over the next five years, in response to a petition against crowding filed by the Association for Citizens’ Rights in Israel, an NGO that combats government abuses.

Now, with that period almost expired, the city has not reached even half that number, according to Ms Wharton.

East Jerusalem also faces discrimination in child care, with five centres in Arab neighbourhoods compared with 25 in Jewish areas, she says.

In some Arab areas there is no proper rubbish removal and in part of the Ras Amud neighbourhood, none at all, she adds. In construction, the municipality rarely approves permits for East Jerusalem residents to build houses, forcing them to build illegally and risk demolition, even as it greatly expands the housing in Jewish settlement neighbourhoods built on lands expropriated from Palestinians.

The municipality did not respond to questions about conditions at the Jebel Mukaber school. It did issue a statement saying that Mr Barkat, the mayor, “is leading in recent years a reduction of the gaps in Arab neighbourhoods in all aspects of life after 40 years of neglect by Israeli governments”.

As part of this, the municipality is “investing amounts unprecedented in their budget and breadth”, it said.

However, Ismail Srour, a community leader in the Jebel Mukaber neighbourhood, is unimpressed by such talk: “I don’t see any progress or advancement,” he says.

“The Israeli president’s statement is correct. But to say something is not enough. We need actions on the ground. We need big changes and not cosmetic solutions. It is obvious the municipality is practising a racist policy. We should receive the same services that Jews receive for their neighbourhoods.”

foreign.desk@thenational.ae