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Classroom shortage in East Jerusalem greater than five years ago

September 6, 2016 at 12:59 pm

The Jerusalem municipality has built just a fraction of the classrooms needed by Palestinians in the east of the city, in defiance of a 2011 Israeli Supreme Court decision.

According to Israeli NGO Ir Amim, in the last five years, only 237 classrooms have been created out of the 2,000 needed in occupied East Jerusalem.

As reported by Haaretz newspaper, the Supreme Court ruled in 2011 that Israeli authorities should “build enough classrooms so that every student who wanted to could transfer from private or other recognised non-state schools to a state school.”

Despite numerous announcements by Mayor Nir Barkat that efforts are underway to seriously tackle the shortage, “the figures show these efforts have led to little change on the ground”, says Haaretz. In fact, “the classroom shortage is now greater than it was in 2011.”

Ir Amim says “the problem is not budgetary,” but rather “discrimination in planning that has caused a shortage of land available for constructing public buildings in East Jerusalem neighbourhoods.”

Haaretz adds: “Even when such land is available, it has been allocated for other uses, says the organization. For example, available land for public buildings in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood was recently allocated by the Israel Lands Authority for a yeshiva, with the city’s support.”