TPC Staff
The Palestine Chronicle / September 1, 2026
Israeli authorities are expanding their curriculum across occupied Jerusalem schools, prompting warnings of an unprecedented assault on Palestinian identity and collective memory.
Israeli curriculum expands rapidly
The Jerusalem Governorate warned on Monday that Israeli occupation authorities are dramatically expanding the imposition of the Israeli curriculum on Palestinian students in occupied Jerusalem, describing the policy as an attempt to reshape the identity, memory and historical consciousness of a new generation.
The latest phase is set to begin on Tuesday with the opening of the 2026-2027 academic year and will include first- and seventh-grade students in official schools affiliated with the Israeli occupation municipality.
Jerusalem Governorate spokesman Marouf al-Rifai described the measure as a “dangerous and unprecedented escalation since 1967” in Israeli attempts to exert control over Palestinian education in the occupied city.
According to figures reported by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, 39,363 Palestinian students will study according to the Israeli curriculum during the new academic year across 105 municipal schools.
Another 5,085 students will follow the curriculum in institutions classified by Israeli authorities as “recognized and unofficial.”
Together, more than 45,000 Palestinian students will therefore study under the Israeli curriculum — approximately 38 percent of the nearly 120,000 students in occupied East Jerusalem.
The expansion has accelerated considerably in recent years.
The number of Palestinian students studying under the Israeli curriculum stood at 10,347 in the 2020-2021 academic year. It rose to 19,402 in 2024-2025 and then to 27,041 in 2025-2026.
Around 15 years ago, only a few hundred Palestinian students in Jerusalem studied according to the Israeli curriculum.
Al-Rifai said the latest measures form part of a longstanding policy of pressuring Palestinian educational institutions, including through school funding and conditions imposed on administrations.
‘Targeting awareness, memory and identity’
The Jerusalem Governorate warned that the issue extends far beyond the textbooks Palestinian children use.
Al-Rifai said Israeli control over education seeks to replace the Palestinian curriculum with the Israeli narrative while marginalizing central elements of Palestinian history and collective memory, including the Nakba, Palestinian detainees and Jerusalem itself.
He argued that education remains one of the principal means through which Palestinians in Jerusalem preserve their national and cultural identity.
Controlling curricula and shaping students’ awareness, he said, therefore form part of broader Israeli policies aimed at annexing and Judaizing occupied Jerusalem and erasing its Arab Palestinian character.
“Jerusalemites’ adherence to the Palestinian curriculum is not just about a school textbook,” al-Rifai said, describing it as a defense of “memory, identity, history and the national narrative.”
The governorate also pointed to Israeli measures against UNRWA educational facilities. Israeli occupation authorities have seized two UNRWA educational complexes serving Palestinians in Shuafat and Kafr Aqab.
According to the governorate, Israeli authorities intend to open 14 secondary-school classes, a primary school and five kindergartens in the Shuafat complex, while a boys’ secondary school is planned for the Kafr Aqab facility.
Al-Rifai said these measures were part of a broader attempt to restructure Jerusalem’s educational environment according to Israeli policies.
The pressure on schools also operates alongside physical measures separating Palestinian communities from Jerusalem, including Israel’s separation wall and checkpoints, which have isolated tens of thousands of Palestinian Jerusalemites from the city center and its institutions.
Governorate calls for international intervention
The Jerusalem Governorate said imposing the occupying power’s curriculum on Palestinians in an occupied city violates international humanitarian law.
Al-Rifai pointed specifically to Israel’s obligations as an occupying power under the Fourth Geneva Convention, including protections for children and the continuity of educational institutions.
He warned that using education to impose a political narrative and undermine the identity of an occupied population was incompatible with those obligations.
The governorate called on UNESCO, the United Nations and other international institutions to intervene urgently to protect Palestinian educational institutions and Palestinians’ right to education, as well as Jerusalem’s cultural and historical identity.
Al-Rifai also urged the international community not to treat Israeli measures in occupied Jerusalem as either a fait accompli or an internal Israeli administrative matter.
He warned that the continued expansion of the Israeli curriculum threatens future generations of Palestinians and the city’s collective memory.
Education, al-Rifai concluded, would remain one of the primary “lines of defense” protecting Jerusalem’s Palestinian identity and the right of its children to know their history and preserve their heritage.
(TPC, QNN, Haaretz)
