Scholarship News

Jerusalem, Israel David E. Miller – Arab residents of Jerusalem on Tuesday welcomed an Israeli Supreme Court decision ordering the city to provide their children with public schools or pay the tuition of private schools, but they remained skeptical that City Hall would be able to carry out the ruling.

The Supreme Court ruled that the state had five years to implement the ruling.

“This verdict will make the state responsible and accountable for what is going on in east Jerusalem,” attorney Tali Nir told The Media Line. “We know that there are thousands of children who try to get admitted to the public schools every year.”

Nir represented the Association for Civil Rights in Israel that filed the claim against the Ministry of Education and Jerusalem’s municipality. She said only half of Jerusalem’s 90,000 Palestinian pupils are registered in the city’s public school system due to lack of classrooms, forcing parents to pay hundreds of dollars a year in private tuition for education they should legally receive for free.

Nir said that in east Jerusalem, some 15,000 students attend schools funded by the Palestinian Authority, but 30,000 others had no other option but to resort to private schools.

“The socio-economic situation in east Jerusalem is very poor. Some 75 percent of families live below the poverty line,” Nir added. “Many families are paying for education which is a very basic human right, currently violated by the state of Israel.”

Huda Abu-Libdeh, a resident of the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Shuafat, grudgingly welcomed the decision. A mother of two boys who were refused admission to Jerusalem’s municipal schools, she said that despite the ruling she was not optimistic.

“The city should be able to solve the problem within one year, not five,” she told The Media Line. “Many mothers like me cannot find space for their children in schools, and today there’s no pressure on City Hall to act. They’re only kids, why should they suffer because there’s no space?”

As of 2009, some 61,000 Arab students learned in just over 2,000 classrooms in Jerusalem’s recognized school system, according to data collected by the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies (JIIS), a local think-tank. Only 47 new classrooms have been built annually for Arab pupils between 2006 and 2008, in contrast to the 81 classrooms built during the same period for Jewish educational institutions.

“For years, insufficient funds were allocated by the state and the municipal council to close the gap between the current situation and what is needed,” Chief Justice Dorit Beinisch wrote in the verdict.

Approximately 300 classrooms have been built by the Jerusalem municipality in east Jerusalem over the past 10 years, Nir admitted, but said that more than 1,000 classrooms were still missing to fulfill the need.

“It will be very difficult for the state to provide all the pupils’ needs within five years,” Dr. Maya Hoshen, a researcher at the JIIS told The Media Line. “However, the state can go a long way in closing the gaps.”

The Jerusalem municipality acknowledged the disparity between east and west Jerusalem, but said it would take time to fix.

“City Hall is aware of the existing gaps and the needs of east Jerusalem residents,” a spokesman for the Jerusalem Municipality told The Media Line in a written response. “The current situation is the result of decades of neglect. The Jerusalem municipality invests huge budgets in many issues regarding east Jerusalem, much more than in the west.”

The spokesman said that lack of zoning permits for educational institutions in east Jerusalem was the main cause for the shortage of classrooms. He added that the municipality has been tackling a shortage of 700 classrooms by renting existing buildings and hauling in mobile classrooms. The city is in the midst of planning the construction of 248 additional classrooms, the spokesman said.

Most of Jerusalem’s 270,000 Arab residents, or 35 percent of the city’s population, were incorporated in the city’s municipal boundaries following the 1967 Six-Day War. The “Jerusalem Law” passed by Israel’s legislature in 1980 established Jerusalem’s status as Israel’s undivided capital city, but most countries do not acknowledge the annexation of post-1967 territories to Jerusalem. Palestinians have also claimed it as the capital of their future state.

Critics say that deep cleavages in municipal investment between mostly Arab east Jerusalem and largely Jewish west Jerusalem have left the city divided in practice. But Dr. Hoshen of JIIS said that the municipality has recently allocated significant funds to build cutting edge schools for residents of east Jerusalem.

“There are some special education schools, such as one in the neighborhood of Ras Al-Amoud, that are the latest word in education,” she said. “In Sur Baher, a minefield was cleared to build a new school which is truly state of the art.”

Huda Abu-Libdeh, whose children were included in the lawsuit against the state, said she would not give up the cause even after her children are entered in the public system.

“I want to help other mothers in my situation,” she said.

View full post on Education Stories