Region | Palestinian Territories
East Occupied Jerusalem lags behind west as school begins
Thousands of children in Occupied Jerusalem's Arab neighbourhoods were kept out of classrooms on the first day of school on Tuesday because of Israeli government neglect, activists and human rights groups said.
- AP
- Published: 20:07 September 1, 2009
Occupied Jerusalem: Thousands of children in Occupied Jerusalem's Arab neighbourhoods were kept out of classrooms on the first day of school on Tuesday because of Israeli government neglect, activists and human rights groups said.
The Arab neighbourhoods of east Occupied Jerusalem lack more than 1,000 classrooms needed to accommodate schoolchildren, according to the report issued by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and Ir Amim, an Israeli non-profit that promotes coexistence in the city.
The report estimates that more than 5,000 would-be students in east Occupied Jerusalem were not enrolled in any school.
"There has been a huge increase in the population in east Occupied Jerusalem, and that has not been followed by a huge increase in classroom construction," said Sarah Kreimer, associate director of Ir Amim.
The Occupied Jerusalem municipality rejected the report, saying the numbers were "distorted."
Israel captured east Occupied Jerusalem from Jordan in the 1967 Mideast war and annexed it, a move that has not been recognised by the international community. Palestinians want east Occupied Jerusalem for the capital of a future state.
Israel sees the whole city as its capital but allows significant gaps in municipal services, building permits and public funding between the relatively prosperous Jewish west and the poorer Arab neighbourhoods of the east. Occupied Jerusalem's Arabs - roughly a third of the city's population of 750,000 - also largely boycott municipal elections to avoid recognizing Israeli control, a move that means forfeiting any clout they could wield at City Hall.
Of the nearly 90,000 children between 5 and 18 years old living in east Occupied Jerusalem, fewer than half were enrolled in municipal public schools last year, the report said.
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