Palestinian Educational Coalition: Ensuring the Regularity of the Academic Year and Protecting Public Education

SadaNews - Education in Palestine constitutes an existential space where the memory of the nation and its identity converge, a platform for shaping awareness and building dignity, and a field where the resistance of mind and spirit crystallizes in the face of the ongoing aggression of the occupation and the attacks of settlers targeting the Palestinian person in body, spirit, and school, as well as a destination to confront attempts of obliteration, displacement, and exclusion.

It is a bastion of steadfastness and a theater of symbolic resistance where awareness is woven and national identity is cemented, and defending it becomes an urgent national duty that cannot be postponed. Protecting education means safeguarding the future, and protecting awareness means preserving the entire nation from attempts of marginalization, obliteration, and the imposition of discriminatory policies.

The coalition emphasizes that the interests of students and teachers represent a top priority, especially after the significant educational loss caused by years of wars, crises, and emergencies. The danger increases with the continued postponement of the academic year in public schools due to the salary crisis, partial disbursement, delays in teachers' entitlements, and the lack of consideration for the rising cost of living, threatening the regularity of the educational process and undermining the steadfastness of generations. In this context, preserving the rights of teachers to live a dignified life and to have fair professional conditions is the cornerstone for the continuity of education, as the teacher is a bearer of a message, a maker of awareness, and the backbone of community endurance in the face of occupation challenges and consecutive crises.

Regarding UNRWA, the continuation of its educational services is a legal and international commitment based on its mandate from the United Nations and General Assembly resolutions, especially resolution 302 issued in 1949 and subsequent resolutions that reaffirm the agency's duty towards Palestinian refugees. The schools run by the agency form a fundamental platform for ensuring students' right to education, preserving their national identity, and solidifying their awareness of the right of return, which is considered an internationally protected legal right under international human rights law and refugee law. This is especially important in the most affected camps, such as northern West Bank, Jenin, and Tulkarm, where partial closures and displacement have disrupted the educational process and compromised the regularity of schools, exacerbating educational loss, threatening community stability, and weakening the bond between generations and the right of return.

The coalition warns that the continued current conditions of public schools, including the lack of full salary disbursement, where the varying disbursement rates do not meet basic needs, and the delay in entitlements, may push citizens to turn towards private schools. This shift poses a direct threat to free public education and serves as a precursor to the privatization of education and undermining students' basic right to accessible and fair education. The coalition affirms that ensuring education and allowing students to reach their schools is a fundamental right for every Palestinian child, guaranteed by national laws and international obligations, including the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and UNESCO treaties related to education and human rights, and any disruption or restriction of the right to education should be treated as a violation of these rights, necessitating urgent action to ensure the continuity of education in a regular and safe manner.

It is apparent that the occupation's withholding of clearance funds and imposing a suffocating financial blockade on the Palestinian Authority is a form of financial piracy and a fundamental cause of the current crisis in the education sector. The international community, especially UNESCO, must pressure the occupation to release the clearance funds, enabling the authority to fulfill its commitments towards teachers and students and guarantee the continuity of the educational process in a fair and sustainable manner.

From this standpoint, the coalition calls for a responsible and effective national partnership among all relevant parties; the government, the teachers' union and syndicates, and civil society, to formulate practical and sustainable solutions that ensure the timely commencement of the academic year in public schools, preserve the dignity of teachers, protect students, and sustain public education as a national lever for awareness, identity, and resilience, thus safeguarding legally guaranteed educational rights and fundamental human rights.

Education in Palestine is the scale of survival and the path to dignity; it weaves consciousness, guards identity, charts the horizon of the future, withstands attempts of obliteration and symbolic extermination, and prevents its slide towards privatization and marginalization.