Palestinian Students to start their School Year 2022/2023
Today, 29th of August 2023 Marks the beginning of the school year in Occupied Palestinian Territory(oPt). 1. 3 million Palestinian students are happy for returning to their schools in Occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.
Palestinian schools are opening their doors to welcome children, while some of those schools will miss some children whose right to life was lost due to Israeli occupation. Since the beginning of 2022, 20 children were killed in the West Bank by soldiers of Israeli occupation and another 17 children were killed in Gaza during the latest Israeli escalation in August 2022.
Access to education in oPt is being violated and affected by Israeli policies of demolition, forcible eviction, settlers’ violence and military escalations in Area “C” and East Jerusalem which are under Israeli control. Those polices currently affect 56 schools (48 schools located in Area C and 8located in East Jerusalem) as they are under partial or full demolition orders or have received stop-work orders. These schools serve around 6508 students in the most vulnerable areas of the West Bank.
In East Jerusalem, the Israeli authorities decided to cancel permanent license of 6 Palestinian private schools to for teaching the Palestinian curriculum. The schools were given a conditional license by the Israeli ministry of education for a year, during which they were requested to make changes to their curriculum or lose their operating license entirely.
In Gaza, the children will return to their schools as the need to support children’s well-being is increasing. This situation requires schools to allocate more school time for recreational activities and deliver systematic and structured mental health and psychological support to children to help them to overcome feelings of fear, trauma and sadness.
As an occupying power, Israel has a legal duty to protect children and teachers from harassment and violence by settlers on their way to and from school – and in any event. ActionAid calls international community to practice pressures on Israel to take concrete and immediate steps to ensure that Palestinian children have safe access to a quality education and avoid the damage or demolition of educational infrastructure by ending demolition of educational facilities and revoking demolition orders in East Jerusalem and Area C of the West Bank in accordance with international Law.
Through its program of “Child Sponsorship”, ActionAid Palestine (AAP) works in partnership in with the Palestinian ministry of education and other local partners to support improvement of infrastructure of Palestinian schools in the governorate of Hebron-Old city of Hebron(H2). AAP also supports recreational activities and summer camps and relief-psychological support activities to improve the welfare of children and educational environmental. AAP works in Gaza with local partners to provide children and their mothers with psychological -social support.
Background Information
ActionAid in Palestine (AAP) is a part of global federation working for social justice and gender equality and eradicate poverty in more than 46 countries around the world. AAP started its work in Palestine in 2007 to strengthen the resilience of Palestinian People as ActionAid believes that they should enjoy their rights to freedom, justice and self-determination. AAP implements a number of programs through its engagement with communities and women and youth groups seeking to empower them and enhance their influential civil and political participation to understand their rights and undertake collective activism to address the protracted rights violations resulting from the prolonged occupation of Palestine. AAP works simultaneously to enhance their leadership capacity and knowledge to practice their citizenship in holding authorities and other duty bearers to account.
For more information, please contact
Riham Jafari
Coordinator of Advocacy and Communication in Palestine
Mobile:
+972 (0) 595242890
Office:
+972 (0) (2) 22 13 137
Email: