Educational and economic dimensions in the Israeli project against occupied Jerusalem

ABSTRACT

Emboldened by American partiality for the Israeli occupation and the feeble Arab-Islamic support for the Palestinian cause, Israel has been taking advantage, over the last five years, of the current events and changing conditions prevailing in the regional Arab system. The Israeli occupation authority employs the two contingent devices of education and the economy in occupied Jerusalem as a base for counter-action in its desperate effort to hit the collective political consciousness that demands terminating occupation, liberation and self-determination. The occupation authority in occupied Jerusalem has employed a systematic scheme to isolate the city from the rest of the West Bank territories. Their aim is to destroy its trade movement in order to tighten the loop of hegemony around the vital economic and social sectors, and to deprive the Palestinian Authority from returns of tourism. Life for the residents of the city has become complicated in every possible way, prompting them to abandon their city. All this would be a part of a ‘voluntary immigration’ policy as a prelude to Judaizing the city, evacuating its residents, replacing them with settlers and, ultimately, dropping the city off the partition claims. The measures adopted by the occupation authorities take advantage of the educational and economic dimensions and employ them as leverage for penetrating the articulating points of the resisting Jerusalemite society. This goal is being achieved by shaking the foundations of the educational system and by obstructing endeavours seeking to improve and propagate it. The occupation authority continued to perpetrate its scheme of ‘displacement/settlement’ when it recently expelled 100,000 Jerusalemites from their city. In light of the aforesaid, this research examines, as its main theme, the impact of putting the educational and economic dimensions to use in the Israeli project against occupied Jerusalem, on the fate of the city, and on the equation of the Arab–Israeli conflict. The paper also argues that it would be natural that a popular youth movement emerging in the face of Israel’s intransigence will nominate its own political leadership, dissociated from the political leadership of the Palestinian factions, so that insurrection can continue.

KEYWORDS:

• Israeli occupation of Palestine
• Israeli occupation authority
• Palestinian resistance to occupation
• Palestinian displacement and resettlement in Jerusalem

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.