Jerusalem children squeezed out of school by Israeli discrimination

Palestinian schoolgirls walk by cement roadblocks erected by Israeli forces in occupied East Jerusalem’s Jabal al-Mukabir neighborhood, 19 October 2015.
Mahfouz Abu Turk APA images
Every year, around 300 boys in the Jabal al-Mukabir neighborhood of occupied East Jerusalem complete middle school and are ready to advance to the next grade.

But fewer than half of them are able to find a spot in the only secondary school in the neighborhood, Sakhnin High School. Many just drop out altogether.

Looking for space in another area is not a solution. The shortage of classrooms available to students in Jabal al-Mukabir is replicated throughout the occupied city.

Israel has militarily occupied East Jerusalem since June 1967 and formally annexed it in 1980.

No country recognizes Israeli sovereignty and under international law its annexation of the city is null and void.
But under the Fourth Geneva Convention, which the UN Security Council has repeatedly stated applies to Israel, the occupying power is responsible for the welfare of the population it rules.

Classroom shortage

It is conservatively estimated that 2,247 new classrooms are needed to meet current shortages and replace existing substandard facilities for Palestinian students in East Jerusalem, according to a [url=http://www.altro.co.il/uploads/252/File/Falling between the Cracks.2015.pdf]new report[/url] by Israeli human rights group Ir Amim.

That adds up to a need for school places for an estimated 80,000 students.

Ir Amim says that the dearth of classroom space is responsible for the fact that 36 percent of children in East Jerusalem do not complete a high school education.

In February 2011, following a decade of litigation, Israel’s high court ruled that the authorities’ neglect of Palestinian schools in Jerusalem violated their right to education.

The government and the Israeli-imposed Jerusalem municipality were given five years to correct the enormous gap between the need for and availability of official education facilities for Palestinians.

But with the deadline nearly reached, it is clear from Ir Amim’s report that the gulf remains as wide as ever.

“The gaps reviewed in this report have intolerable repercussions for tens of thousands of children,” Ir Amim states. These children “have no place in the official educational system and are forced to study in recognized but unofficial institutions.”

Since 2001, the number of students attending schools that fall under this status, including Sakhnin High School, has multiplied by a factor of 22, while the number enrolled in official schools has grown a modest 40 percent.

Recognized but unofficial schools receive some education ministry funding but are privately operated, charge tuition fees and are far inferior to official schools, according to Ir Amim. They are frequently located in overcrowded buildings and lack basic facilities such as air-conditioning, heating, laboratories and libraries.

Ir Amim calls the rising number of students in such schools alarming. Their rapid increase is a reflection of the desperate need for more classrooms than the municipality and the Israeli education ministry provide, not student or parental preference.

At the beginning of the academic year in 2015, parents in Jabal al-Mukabir refused to send their children to Sakhnin due to the substandard quality of education.

Ir Amin notes that parents in the neighborhood have been very active in advocating for better facilities for their children. In July 2015, a group of parents filed a lawsuit against the Israeli authorities for their refusal to open a school for boys in the neighborhood.

Of 105,000 Palestinian students in school in East Jerusalem, 42 percent are in official schools, 42 percent are in recognized but unofficial schools and the remaining 16 percent are in private schools.

However, there are at least 127,000 Palestinian children of school age in East Jerusalem, which means that the educational status of 22,000 children is unknown.

Highest dropout rate

The neglect of education in East Jerusalem has led to Palestinians there having the highest dropout rate anywhere in historic Palestine.

Palestinian children in East Jerusalem have a dropout rate of 13 percent, more than twice the rate for Palestinian citizens in present-day Israel.

The dropout rate for male and female secondary students in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, where education is run by the Palestinian Authority and UN agencies, is about 2.5 percent, according to the United Nations Development Programme.

West Jerusalem, the part of the city that became overwhelmingly Jewish as a result of the 1948 ethnic cleansing of its Palestinian population by Zionist militias, has a dropout rate of just one percent and boasts 21 programs dedicated to dropout prevention.

East Jerusalem, which is still predominantly Palestinian despite Israel’s ongoing efforts to ethnically cleanse it through home demolitions, colonization and revocation of residency rights, has a mere eight such programs – due to a lack of funds.

In 2014 the Israeli government decided to invest in the socioeconomic development of Jerusalem “for the benefit of all of its residents,” according to Ir Amim.

Yet the plan budgeted $24 million to police and just $12 million to education for all of Jerusalem. Nowhere does the scheme mention the severe shortage of classrooms for Palestinian children.

Ir Amim notes that 38 percent of the sum allocated for education was directed towards Israel’s efforts to assert its control over East Jerusalem in violation of the needs, wishes and rights of Palestinians there.

Discriminatory planning

And while 2015 saw the construction of more classrooms in East Jerusalem than in the previous 14 years combined, the number of new classrooms built since 2001 is still only half of what is needed merely to keep up with population growth.

While Ir Amim does not expand on the reasons why Israeli authorities have failed to meet their court-ordered obligations, Israel’s longstanding discriminatory planning policies certainly offer a partial explanation.

In 1975, Yisrael Kimhi, a senior interior ministry official, explained Israel’s plan for its newly conquered territory in East Jerusalem: “one of the cornerstones in the planning of Jerusalem is the demographic question.”

In other words, it became Israeli government policy to limit the growth of the Palestinian population in East Jerusalem while promoting Jewish settlement.

So while 38 percent of East Jerusalem’s planned areas have been confiscated for the development of Jewish settler neighborhoods, only 2.6 percent is zoned for public buildings – such as schools – for the city’s indigenous Palestinians.

https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/charlotte-silver/jerusalem-children-squeezed-out-school-israeli-discrimination?utm_source=EI+readers&utm_campaign=c18e69b932-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_e802a7602d-c18e69b932-299185673

Absue and terrorism can be subtle and comes in many forms.

Some independent person should walk in, toss a fucking coin and who ever wins the toss, wins the land

That's the fairest way to deal with these two stupid countries.

Sadly sassy is being taken in as she is daily with lies and fabrications.



Congratulations are in order for An-Najah National University (ANU) of Nablus. It heads the list of the top 12 “Palestinian” universities, ranked by an international site that ranks over 11,000 institutions in more than 200 countries. If the supporters of academic boycott against Israel want to find evidence of the horrid suppressive impact of Israel on academic freedom in the PA, they should ignore this university and seek evidence elsewhere.
Entrance to An-Najeh National University. By Almonroth (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia CommonsANU boasts of having over 20,000 students who follow a wide range of courses of study. First operating as an elementary school in 1918, it gradually grew and in 1941 became a college; by 1965 it was a teacher’s college.
In 1967, Jordan lost control of the so-called West Bank in their attempt, as part of a united Arab military campaign, to destroy Israel; in this defensive war, Israel ousted the Jordanians and regained the land, officially named, by the way, Judaea & Samaria. A mere decade later, the teacher’s college had grown to become a full-fledged university with Faculties of Arts and Sciences, all under the watchful eyes of the Israeli so-called “occupation”.
Under the oppressive Israelis, this institute of higher learning expanded to include Faculties of Economics, Administrative Sciences, Educational Sciences and Engineering (1978), Chemistry and Islamic Studies (1985), Pharmacy, Environmental Studies and more (1994), Law (1995), Medicine (1999), Veterinary Medicine, Agricultural Development and Computer Sciences (2000), Information Technology (2001), Optometry and Nursing (2004) and on and on and on. ANU is proud of its science research labs and library facilities and more. You can read about the history of ANU development here.
In 1981, a mere 4 years after the “occupation” began, the first masters programme of study was initiated and ANU received recognition from the World Union of Universities.
This year (2015) the ANU, together with Al-Quds University and Birzeit, received an EU grant to set up masters of Law degree programmes and the ANU website announces that they are looking for a Finance Officer to oversee the administration of the grant. This kind-of nullifies their complaint that Israel severely restricts international academic cooperation. Furthermore, on November 19 of this year, a full-day event was held for those students who wish to study in the United States and want to know how to apply for visas and other useful tips. Guess Israel isn’t preventing “Palestinian” students from travelling abroad to study after all. ANU is proud, in fact, of its student exchange and study abroad programmes, of its online courses and its Arabic language class for foreigners.
The ANU website is also encouraging its faculty to submit papers for consideration for publication in professional journals and to apply to present papers at an international conference to be held in Tunisia in 2016; I suppose that means they do not anticipate any problems getting exit and re-entry visas to attend that conference. Ambitious, the university is trying to develop its own two new professional journals, one in natural sciences and the other in the humanities, attempting to achieve a standard that will allow their journals to be added to professional databases. No small accomplishment for universities operating under “oppressive occupation”, I would say.
It is true that this university has only 1 Phd programme (Chemistry) but it has [url=http://fgs.najah.edu/sites/fgs.najah.edu/files/english catalog.pdf]36 masters degree programmes[/url]. All of this from a teacher’s college in 1965 till now. Remember, in 1993, responsibility for higher education went to the Palestinian Authority under the Oslo Accords signed between Israel and the PA. This means that the foundations of the university were developed under the auspices of the Israeli so-called “occupation”.
Since the PA has responsibility for higher education, it appears that a major factor slowing their pace in catching up to the West lies in budgetary restraints. Abbas was at ANU to inaugurate the New Campus in 2006; I wonder if, in exchange for his honourary law degree he gave the university some of his well-earned-siphoned-off millions that were donated to the PA/him by the congenial European Union. Sharing the riches intended for development would go far in showing that the PA leadership cared at least as much about higher education as they do about stabbing Jews in the back and taking Israelis to the ICC.
Maybe you would like to take advantage of the opportunity to study Arabic at ANU as a foreign exchange student and check out the place for yourself. You can then write and tell us if you find evidence supporting the academic boycott against Israel. That’s all I ask – check it out. If you want to boycott Israel you owe it to yourself.


http://jewsdownunder.com/2016/01/04/want-to-boycott-israel-ignore-this-pa-university/

What a dickhead, as normal.  The university is in NABLUS in the NORTHERN WEST BANK, has 10% of it's funding from the Palestine Authority and the rest from private funding:

http://www.najah.edu/sites/default/files/Administration/Document/English%20file%20fundraising2_0.pdf



The schools in the article are in East Jerusalem, run and funded by Israel since they illegally annexed it.   Sigh, some people are so stupid.

eddie wrote:Some independent person should walk in, toss a fucking coin and who ever wins the toss, wins the land

That's the fairest way to deal with these two stupid countries.

I don't think you would say the same thing if the EU decided to give Essex to Syria, tossed you out and left you to fend for yourself, the Syrians then started building on the rest of the UK?

Again the Palestinians brought on their own misery.
They did nor accept the partition plan and instead and have since waged war against the Israeli's How anyone can even view them as victims is likening the Nazi invasion of Poland as the Germans being victims, of which the Nazi;s played off victimhood throughout the 1930's
Even nowe they view all of Israel as occupied, denying self determination of the Israeli's Based omn this reasoning they would have to be against every nation created since the end of WW1, including the many Arab nations formed from a minority people from within a former majority Empire or country.
Now there is a peaceful road ahead, which can be achieved, but the Palestinian authorities ensure through daily indoctrinated hate, the conflict continues.Israel is not without fault, but how the regressives come out with the most weakest arguments is incredible.

As a people who glorify children dying and murderers committing terrorist acts, then you clearly see why this famous quote is so accurate


“We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children. We will only have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us.”

sassy wrote:

eddie wrote:Some independent person should walk in, toss a fucking coin and who ever wins the toss, wins the land

That's the fairest way to deal with these two stupid countries.

I don't think you would say the same thing if the EU decided to give Essex to Syria, tossed you out and left you to fend for yourself, the Syrians then started building on the rest of the UK?

This shows again more proof of antisemitism and trying to make the most absurd comparrison to what is not a comparrison.

Sassy has just erased any Jewish history to the Middle East, even though Jews have lived there for generations for over 2,500 years. Jews were living the Holy Lands, before the migrations started in the mid 19th century were Jews were fleeing persecution in Europe. With Jews buying up land prosperity came to the are which brought in Arab migrants as well, which today we know only 4 percent of Jews are descended from before the migrations and only around 8 percent Arabs living before the migrants, the rest all were from later migrationbs. So to use the migration argument is weak, poor and fundementally is denying self determination, where both were offered a partition plan. Israel accepted but the Palestinians refused. So how you can make a view on Syrians who have never lived for centuries in the UK is not only absurd but of no comparrison at all. All it shows is you believe Israel should not exist

IN A NUTSHELL

• So-called ‘Palestinians’ are newcomers to Palestine. Most are generic Arabs who migrated to British Mandate Palestine from surrounding Arab countries to take advantage of the relative prosperity brought about by the Zionist Movement and the British Mandate.
  
  
• Palestine is a geographical area, not a nation. Before the establishment of Israel, members of two national entities – Palestinian Jews and Palestinian Arabs - inhabited Mandate Palestine.
  
  
• A Palestinian people was artificially created in the 1960s by the PLO after the Six-Day War to rob Jews of their homeland and historical identity, and to paint them as victimizers and trespassers. The objective is to lay the groundwork for creating another Arab state at the expense of the Jews – whom Arabs consider an alien and illegitimate political entity in the Middle East.
  
  
• Seventy percent of all Jordanians define themselves as Palestinians. That there exists a separate Palestinian people from the Jordanian population is a fabrication designed to force the creation of a second Palestinian state.
  
  

^{http://www.mythsandfacts.org/Conflict/7/palestinians1.htm}




In the midst of various arguments, what has been overlooked is a simple and incontrovertible way to prove that the vast majority of “Palestinians” are the descendants of the relatively recent Arab immigrants.

Peters calculated that in 1882, just the non-nomadic, settled Muslims in Palestine numbered 141,000. Among them, those that resided in Palestine before the 1831 Egyptian invasion numbered 75 percent, or 105,700 (FTI page 197). By 2015, descendants of these 105,700 persons can trace their linage in Palestine for almost 200 years. Therefore, one might consider them to be the indigenous residents. The date 1831 is important, because this was the beginning of the war with Arab Egypt, during which many thousands of Arabs settled in Palestine and changed its demographics.

The number of 105,700 thousand settled Muslims is in general agreement with other important data. Walter Lowdermilk gives the total number of 200,000 people residing in Palestine in 1850 (page 76 – Palestine Land of Promise 1944). Lowdermilk's number includes Jews, Christians, travelling nomadic Bedouins and settled Muslims. It also includes Arabs that immigrated after the war of 1831. Arthur Ruppin estimates the total population in year 1882 as 300,000 Palestinian inhabitants, including nomadic and settled Muslims, Christians and Jews (The Jews in the Modern World, MacMillan - 1934 page 368).

If these 105,700 indigenous Muslims were to increase in numbers only through natural population growth, how many would they number today in 2015? This would represent the size of this population as if there were no Muslim immigration at all.

We can calculate the estimated 2015 native population, based on natural rates of population growth. I assume that the post-1882 Muslim population in Palestine -- apart from immigration — grew at approximately the same rate as the populations of neighboring Syria, Egypt and Lebanon for which rates we have reliable data. That rate of growth was 1.1% per annum. (FTI page 529 table in note 78) **

I used the compounded interest formula to do the math. Applying the 1.1% growth rate to the Muslim population resident in Palestine in 1882 yields a total number of 453,000 Muslim descendants in 2015 of these original 105,700 native people.

According to the 2015 World Almanac, the current “Palestinian” population, including Israeli Arabs, and Arab residents of Gaza, Golan, Judea and Samaria totals 10,523,715 people. 453,000 descendants of indigenous Muslim residents constitute only 4.3% of the current “Palestinian” population. Therefore the other 95.7% of present-day “Palestinians” are clearly those Arabs and their descendants who migrated to Israel between 1831 and 2015.



Despite the substantial documentation assembled by Peters, demonstrating massive Arab immigration into Palestine, anti-Israel propagandists continue to deny it. Based on what we know today, and the simple truths of basic math, the issue has become clear and unambiguous. All historic records indicate that only insignificant number of long-term settled Muslims were present in Palestine before 1882, when the large Jewish immigration began. Muslim Arab numbers increased dramatically as Jewish settlements developed infrastructure and provided work opportunities to Arabs from the neighboring countries.

Also worth noting is that the “indigenous” 4.3% comprised many non-Arab nationalities. All of them were swamped by the Arab immigrants and within a few generations largely lost their identity.

Given the complete absence of any historical record to the contrary, we can authoritatively say that the “Palestinian people” never existed until they were invented in the 1960s as a tool for continuing the Arab war against Israel.

The claim that “Palestinians” are the indigenous people of Israel and that most of the present Palestinian Arabs have lived in these lands since time immemorial is a total fraud. Albeit posthumously, Joan Peters has had the last word on the subject.


http://www.jpost.com/Blogs/Why-World-Opinion-Matters/Are-Arabs-the-indigenous-people-of-Palestine-402785

sassy wrote:

eddie wrote:Some independent person should walk in, toss a fucking coin and who ever wins the toss, wins the land

That's the fairest way to deal with these two stupid countries.

I don't think you would say the same thing if the EU decided to give Essex to Syria, tossed you out and left you to fend for yourself, the Syrians then started building on the rest of the UK?

Is it any worse than the never-ending war between these two places?
Will it ever be resolved? No
Does anyone actually get to live in their land in peace? No
Do all these people and children live on a bomb site? Yes

So really, given the choice, I'd rather be moved out of Essex to,somewhere else where everyone was safe and the war would stop.

The data and the information in the OP is accurate and drawn from this report which backs it all up....

http://www.ir-amim.org.il/sites/default/files/Falling%20between%20the%20Cracks.2015.pdf

The report was compiled by Israeli's so there should be no question of it being fabricated or misleading.

Interesting so where you constantly challenge Israeli's like for example Doctors, that is acceptable but a report that claims discrminationis nor fabricated to you based on it being written by Israeli's? Flawed logic if I ever heard anything espcially when as seen the Israeli left wing media outlet haaretz has been constantly caught out lying.
That is not a bases for claiming accuracy or inaccuracy but evidence is, hence why I always am able to show why your reasoning is flawed and based from a position hateful bias. not reason.
So your reasoning is very flawed as to what is accurate or misleading.
I am very interested in reading this and even more so if true to promote that such discrimination should stop but please do not come out with the contradicting statement you just made above where you certainly choose when and who you wish to believe in regards to Israeli's
That kind of flawed reasoning just shows how you constantly compremise your ability to look at anything on the topic of Israel with any balance of impartiality.