Israeli municipality of Jerusalem provides seats in its schools for 33 Palestinian students

Wednesday November 07, 2007 16:28 by PNN - IMEMC News

In the wake of a petition submitted by the lawyer Tali Ner, of the Israeli Association of Citizen's Rights, to the administrative court in Jerusalem on Wednesday, 33 student residents of East Jerusalem, who the municipality had previously refused to provide school places for, will be admitted to the school system.

According to this petition, the municipality would accept all of the children except for seven who already joined private schools because of the municipality's delay in finding them places in its schools.

The petition had demanded the municipality provide the children with all of the suitable educational needs immediately, and pay all educational expenses of those children who joined the private schools. In such cases where it is not possible to guarantee teaching students within an official education framework, the law stated that the authorities in charge should provide other education establishments, and the state treasury should be responsible for paying all of the expenses. The grades of the children who filed the petition are from the first to eleventh grades. All are residents of East Jerusalem.

The Jerusalem municipality had ignored all of the calls of a local organization to assure the right of the children to free education. But as the date of the discussion of the petition was close, it began working to provide places in its schools for those children, the last three of which got their places on Wednesday morning before the court discussion. The municipality had promised to organize classes to compensate the children for the classes they missed. The court had asked the petitioners to inform it if the municipality has complied with its commitments until the date of November 20th.
For long years, residents of East Jerusalem have been lacking school buildings. The shortage of classes is estimated at 1300 rooms. The crisis of school buildings in the city is a well known problem to the Israeli authorities. Many reports were prepared on this issue but neither the municipality nor the Ministry of Education built any new buildings to cover the shortage. As a result many students missed their chances for a decent education, or were forced to join private schools or schools outside Jerusalem despite the high expenses and the hardships they face on their way to reach these schools.

Israeli lawyer, Ner, affirmed in her petition that the right of education is a basic human right in accordance with the Israeli law and different International conventions Israel is a signatory of. She added that in the issues relating to the residents of East Jerusalem, the municipality and the Ministry of Education are violating the law on purpose, and the municipality is always delaying providing education services to the children of the city until going to the court. The problem could be solved before the beginning of the school year to avoid the suffering of the families caused by depriving their children of their right in free education.

Translated by Manar Jibrin-IMEMC News

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