Schools Are Not Your Farms

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

Ever since the self-rule authority was established in the West Bank and Gaza, it has been working to manufacture the appearance of support for itself by shutting down schools, pulling employees out of their institutions, mobilizing security-service personnel, and asking some university presidents to suspend classes. Thursday, 24 February 2011, was one more episode in this ongoing series. This is the pattern of Arab regimes: deceiving themselves, and trying to convince people that the masses, one and all, applaud the leader and cheer him and carry him on their shoulders, dancing.

You are not fooling the people. People know perfectly well that you use your authority to shut down schools, that you press the directors of education into serving your narrow political purposes, and that you exploit employees — because of their vulnerability where their salaries are concerned — to turn out for your demonstrations, which express no genuine support for you at all. People know full well that you are deceiving yourselves and no one but yourselves. Perhaps no one has told you that most of the employees you pull out of their offices despise what you are doing, and always make clear their lack of support for you.

…to chant for one side or the other, or to turn their backs on you and go home, or loiter about in the streets of the cities and villages. No one on this earth possesses this right, and if such a thing is ever to be done, it must be done according to a national consensus bearing on matters that unite the people.

The student’s seat in the classroom is sacred, and you are profaning it. Keep your hands off the people, off their sons, off their daughters, and leave the schools alone. And if you want to demonstrate your popular strength, know that exploitation and the use of authority will not avail you. You cannot fool the people, and there may well be, in these acts of yours, something that will hasten your own downfall without your realizing it; perhaps you can find a lesson and a warning in the Arab regimes that have made a habit of using this very same method.

Do you want to show broad popular support for Mr. Abu Mazen? Your methods only make him weaker upon weaker.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “المدارس ليست مزارعكم” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.