In Palestine, Integration, Development, Participation - school system and education

UN Chronicle, Winter, 1999 by Ibrahim Abu Lughod

As the twentieth century, with its major transformations determining events, approaches its finale, the fate of Palestine and its people will stand out as one of its more notable issues, and one with which the United Nations has been intimately associated.

Subsequent to its military occupation in December 1917 by the British army, the League of Nations charged Britain with a mandate to govern Palestine and prepare its population for self-government. Simultaneously, the mandate was also to "facilitate the establishment of the Jewish National Home" in Palestine. We don't need to concern ourselves with the political history of Palestine; we are more concerned with educational developments that reflect the interplay between the political system and the growth of Palestinian Arab education in Palestine. The Palestinian Arab people who were born or raised in the Palestine of the British mandate, and their descendants, irrespective of their current residence or national status, today number slightly more than 8 million. Less than 3 million are under the educational jurisdiction of a Palestinian authority that functions in parts of Palestine (less than 10 per cent of the total land of historic Palestine). Modest as this educational jurisdiction may be, and despite som e subtle constraints and limitations inherent in the Oslo Agreements concluded by Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, it signifies the possible independence of the Palestinians, for the first time in their history, to chart the educational future of their people.

Even a rudimentary review of the history of the Palestinian people suggests that non-Palestinian authorities--some openly hostile to their development and aspirations, while others more concerned with their own particular national priorities and needs--determined their educational curriculum. That was true since the onset of the British mandate in 1922. Until 1948, the Palestine Mandate Government determined the structure of education, certification of schooling, the overall purposes of the system of education, the curriculum to be used and the budget allotted for that purpose. The consequence of that exogenous control became evident as the years went by. First, the Government did not allot enough of the Palestinian budget to meet the educational needs of the Palestinian Arab people in Palestine. By the termination of the mandate, less than one third of the school-age population (6 to 17) was able to enrol in the basic educational system, which was structured into an elementary system lasting seven years, an d a secondary system lasting four years. Post-secondary education was confined to a two-year junior college (the Arab College of Jerusalem) that admitted less than 30 students each year and some three vocational secondary-level schools. Palestinians seeking university education-and many of the more economically-able did so-pursued their university education beginning at the American University of Beirut and, somewhat later, in Britain or the United States.

While the quality of that educational system was reasonable, it conformed to the needs of a colonial administration in educating "natives" in useful skills for an alien system and values not necessarily supported by Palestinian culture, or lacking in sensitivity to Palestinian and Arab history, culture, values and national aspirations. When Palestine was forcibly dismembered in 1948 and effectively replaced by Israel, the Jordanian West Bank and the Egyptian-administered Gaza Strip, Palestinian education came under these authorities' jurisdiction. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), established in 1949, assumed an important role in the education of Palestinian refugees displaced from their homes in what became Israel and who continue to exist as refugees, not only in the West Bank and Gaza, but also in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. UNRWA assumed direct educational responsibility for all refugees irrespective of place of residence, with two important limitat ions: its educational scope was restricted for the most part to the first nine years of education and some significant but limited vocational and teacher training systems; and, consistent with the agreements concluded with the "host" countries, it utilized the national curricula of the host States. UNRWA could not function within the Palestinian refugee population displaced from their original homes who continued to live within Israel. As evident from the data opposite, considerable progress in school enrolment and school building was achieved during this period; and although the curriculum was not Palestinian, the close affinity of Palestinians with Arab culture helped in conveying more Arab values and concerns than either the previous or the following periods.

The situation changed quite positively for Palestinian education in 1993/1994, in the wake of the transfer of authority from Israel to the Palestinian Authority under the 1993 Oslo Agreement. The Palestinian Authority assumed its governing role in the principal cities of Palestine and assumed full jurisdiction over a number of social and cultural functions, including that of education. Organized in 1994, the Palestinian Ministry of Education reviewed the existing conditions of the school system, devised plans for the future and has been trying to meet the increasing educational demands of the population.