Ramallah: Israeli occupation forces have prevented the management of Al Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem from distributing textbooks to students of the Sharia schools inside the shrine.
The incident happened at the Lions Gate entrance to the mosque on the first day of the Palestinian new academic year.
The Awqaf Department, which runs the mosque on behalf of the Jordanian government, had days earlier applied for Israeli permission to deliver the textbooks but received no response.
Security forces stopped vehicles loaded with the books from entering the holy site to distribute to around 700 students.
The move is intended to encourage parents to pull their children out of these schools inside the holy site, Shaikh Najeh Bakeerat, head of Al Aqsa mosque, told Gulf News.
“They are also trying to punish Palestinians schools who refuse to adopt the Israeli curricula,” he added.
The Israeli Education Ministry has been imposing tough measures on Palestinians schools in Occupied Jerusalem, to force them to adopt the Israeli curriculum.
Those which shift to the Israeli curricula are rewarded but schools that stick to the Palestinian curricula are prevented from carrying out renovations to provide more classrooms.
The ministry has allocated a budget of $5 million to support schools that adopt the Israeli curricula.
Shaikh Bakeerat said Israeli punitive measures implemented a couple of years ago had forced many families to withdraw their children from the Sharia schools and enroll them in other schools of the holy city.
The Al Aqsa Mosque—the third holiest site in Islam—has two secondary Sharia schools (preparatory and secondary) and an elementary Sharia school, which teach the Palestinian curriculum in addition to providing Sharia learning material printed by the Awqaf Department.
Layla Shalabi, a Palestinian Grade 10 student at Al Aqsa Secondary Sharia School, told Gulf News: “We suffer ill treatment by the Israeli occupation forces on our way to schools inside Al Aqsa Mosque. Sometimes the occupation forces seize our textbooks or throw them in the garbage.”
Al Haram Al Sharif, which houses Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, has been a flashpoint in the Israeli-Palestinian struggle.
Two months ago, after a shootout near the compound, it was sealed off for two days while the occupation forces installed metal detectors at the entrances.
Palestinians refused to enter the mosque until the Israeli government removed the devices.
Israel occupied and annexed the eastern part of Jerusalem in 1967 in a move never recognised by the international community.
Since then the holy site has been governed by a decades-old status quo agreement between the Israeli and Jordanian governments under which Jews are allowed to visit the site but banned from praying there.
