Schools

Report published: Settlement expansion and ethnic cleansing in Palestine: A Jordan Valley case study June 2009

Settlement expansion and ethnic cleansing in Palestine: A Jordan Valley case study June 2009

Schools

The aims of this project are firstly to link schools in the Brighton and
Hove area with schools in Tubas and the Jordan valley. The links are at
the level of friendship between the children and teachers.

Secondly the project is part of a wider effort to publicize the
humanitarian issues facing Palestinian Communities within the Jordan
Valley.

Friendship links depend largely on those traveling between Brighton and
Tubas. Letters in English and Arabic, drawings, pictures and films are all
taken by individuals or posted back from Jerusalem. We have one post box

Fasayil Village children and School

Fasayil Village - Children and School

The school they didn’t want us to build

School 2Just over a year ago in April 2007 a delegation from Brighton visited Upper Fasayil in the Jordan Valley, West Bank, Palestine. They sat down with the villagers and planned to build a school, knowing that the the villagers were prohibited from doing any building, improvements or repairs by the Israeli Civil Military Administration*.

Resourcefulness and tenacity

Our first night was spent in Al Jiftlik, a village with the surreal scenario of being half area B and half area C, meaning half gets electricity and building rights while the other half lives in the 9th Century. (We ate in area B and slept in area C, at least Palestinians still have permission for this.) This is the village reported by previous delegations as having a tent school due to Israel’s refusal to allow the Palestinians to educate themselves.

Lear

Nawaal, the headteacher, leads me out of the glaring sunlight and into the classroom. My eyes adjusting to the relative gloom, I find myself faced with a dozen boys barely younger than me, comfortable, curious, and amused. Minutes before, I and the Brighton Tubas delegation were being shown around the new school of Al Jiflik, a large village spread across one of the many beautiful valleys of the West Bank. It was our first day in occupied Palestine. Before thinking, I pressed my services on Nawaal, suggesting that my native tongue could be of great value in her English lesson.

Al Jiflic- a Jordan Valley success story

Visiting Al Jiftlik, I met the people who had been involved in the campaign to build the tent school there. They were denied permission to build a school, so they built one out of tents. After a long and ardous struggle they won the right to have a school, and built a new school out of breezeblocks. jiflic new schoolI’d heard the story, and was keen to see this rare success story in the Jordan valley.

URGENT CALLOUT – Funds needed to continue building Fasayil primary school

As many of you will know, the Brighton Tubas Friendship and Solidarity Group are involved in a joint solidarity project to build a much needeschool for the Palestinian village of Fasayil in the Jordan Valley Construction begun in the summer of 2007 in defiance of Israel's complete ban on house building in the area and the school is a physical manifestation of the Palestinian people's peaceful resistance to the occupation. On the 17th of October, Israel's 'Military Civil Administration' issued an injunction against the continued building of the school and unless the village apply for a permit by the 29th of December the school can be demolished. However, house permits are never issued in Fasayil as the land is designated as 'agricultural' by the Israeli authorities.

Fasayil School given until 29th December before Potential Demolition

Since July the people of Fasayil, supported the Brighton-Tubas Friendship and Solidarity Group and the Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign, have been building a school in an act of defiance against Israeli military restrictions on building. On October 17th the Israeli Military served an injunction on the building of Fasayil primary school. Injunctions from the military can proceed to demolition qickly after being rubber stamped by the court. The people of Fasayil continued to build their school, in defiance of the injunction.

Palestinian farmers under the Occupation

How do you make a living as a farmer when your land and water has been stolen from you by the Israeli invaders? The answer is that you don’t. You join the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in refugee camps in Jordan, or you work for a pittance in the illegal Israeli settlements spreading like a cancer over the once fertile land of Palestine. The Jordan valley was once the most fertile region for Palestinian farmers.