Shutting Down Schools Is the Destruction of Palestine

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

Many are those who do not grasp the terrifying danger entailed in shutting down Palestine’s schools, and do not see the extent of the deterioration that will befall the Palestinian people as a result of the teachers’ strike. We all remember our insistence on shutting down schools during the 1987 intifada, and we remember how a Palestinian decision was made to form “national cheating committees,” on the model of the committees found in prisons. Our actions led to widespread ignorance among a broad sector of the youth, and we are now paying the price for that through the spread of illiterate thugs who imagine themselves leaders keeping watch over the homeland’s well-being. Ignorance is a deadly affliction, for the individual and the nation alike, and no nation wishing to advance or gain its freedom has failed to focus on scholarly and moral advancement; and no living nation that finds its moral order beginning to deteriorate fails to reckon that its educational system is collapsing, and that it must review it, modernize it, and lift it up.

I do not dispute the teachers’ right to a salary, nor do I dispute their right to salaries higher than what they receive, and I have defended them time and again, and stood with them in their previous strikes; I still believe the salary they receive falls short of the required level. But I argue for a search for methods that achieve the necessary pressure on the party withholding the salary, while at the same time not leaving our children in the street.

I search for the logic behind this long strike, and I do not find it, because control over the money does not lie with an internal party but with external ones. The Palestinian government has no money that it is withholding from the people; it is besieged by Israel, America, and local parties, just as the Palestinian people are besieged. And if there are those who accuse Hamas of distributing money to its own pillars, then I see Fatah too distributing money to its own figures. The leaderships do not suffer material need or want, and it is our responsibility, as the people of Palestine, to insist on opening the files so that we may know the truth, and know who betrays the people and who is honest with them. I go even further than that, to say that Palestinian leaders do not only receive money from abroad, but also receive weapons from Israel with American financial backing. The American president has announced this repeatedly.

It is very important that our protests be directed against those who are withholding money from us. Europe and America are withholding funds, and Israel is holding funds in escrow (to date, it is holding roughly 550 million dollars). Why do we not demonstrate in front of the representative offices of the European states, or American institutions, or the associations and centers funded by the United States? If we protest, we will stir up the world media, and turn the world’s eyes toward America, which rejects the results of democracy and wants to punish the Palestinian people for their electoral expression.

We must also press the government to get rid of the excess expenditures that waste public funds. There are thousands of official cars driven by people at the Palestinian people’s expense, there are buildings and apartments rented at the people’s expense, and there are hotel rooms still occupied by holders of public office.

The question is: what can we do against the states imposing the siege on us, and forcing the Arab states to adopt the siege as well? And what must we do to compel the government to pursue corruption and cut public expenditure? We must ask ourselves: do we really want our daily bread to remain contingent on the will of America and Israel? Or should we be thinking about what we need to develop economically, so that our political will may be freed? Do we press the government so that it may beg, or so that it may develop new economic and financial conditions?

Perhaps many of the striking teachers do not know that a number of those inciting them to continue the strike are partners in the financial siege imposed on the Palestinian people. These leaders, who appear on television screens trying to shed tears for the Palestinian people, are cooperating with America and Israel to keep the funds blocked, while at the same time inciting the strike. These are also among the leading figures accused of corruption, who must be held accountable for what they have stolen from the people. The people’s interest is not their concern; rather, they are using the employees to bring down the Hamas government so that they might take its place. They are using people for their own private interests, which are tied to Israel and America. And as a reminder, these are the very people who stood against the teachers’ strike in the past, and planted elements of the security services within their ranks to sabotage the strike, and who arrested teachers from the strike committee. They worked to make that strike fail at the time, because it demanded better conditions for teachers; now they stand with the teacher, because he stands against Hamas.

We, the Palestinian people, are not tassels hanging off the tail of this faction or that; rather, we are a people who offer up sacrifices, and who must defend our rights and the blood of our sons. We do not want to be lost in factional conflict, nor to be tools in the hands of Israel and America and their agents. Factionalism has affected us negatively, and we must stand for the unity of the people and its interest, which rises above the interests of Fatah and the interests of Hamas.

If we do not want to direct our arrows against those who are financially besieging the Palestinian people, then at the very least we must not obstruct the process of education. A teacher has the right to strike, but he does not have the right to prevent a student from going to school, or to lock the school, or to send armed men to fire shots in front of schools to terrorize the students, male and female.

The Palestinian people must move to open the schools. We had a pioneering experience during the Zionist invasion of Palestinian towns, when we established popular schools, and we are now capable of volunteering to run schools once again. It is true that popular efforts do not yield the same fruits as official efforts, but they can keep our children off the streets. It is our duty to come together, to undertake the experience of opening the schools, and to organize our popular affairs until the problem of salaries and the strike is resolved.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “تعطيل المدارس تدمير لفلسطين” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.