Starting with the academic year commencing Tuesday, all newly opened first and seventh grade classes in public schools in East Jerusalem will transition to the Israeli education curriculum, marking the first time since Israel annexed the area in 1967 that the Israeli curriculum is applied across all new grades in the Palestinian-majority neighborhoods.
Following Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem after the 1967 Six-Day War, the Palestinian education system in the area continued to operate under guidelines aligned with the West Bank, initially adopting the Jordanian curriculum before switching to the Palestinian Authority’s curriculum in the 1990s. Historically, efforts by Israeli authorities to impose the Israeli curriculum were met with intense opposition from Palestinian residents, including prolonged strikes by teachers, parents, and students, which led to the abandonment of such attempts at the time.
This year’s expansion is the product of a gradual process initiated by parents and reinforced by Israeli government pressure on school principals. As a result, over 45,000 students out of approximately 120,000 Palestinian students in East Jerusalem—representing about 38 percent—will now be taught using the Israeli curriculum. This is a significant increase from roughly 15 years ago when fewer than 10 percent studied under this system and from about six years ago when fewer than 13,000 students were enrolled in Israeli curriculum programs.
Most of the students following the Israeli curriculum, totaling approximately 39,363, attend one of the 105 municipal schools governed by the Jerusalem municipality in East Jerusalem. An additional 5,085 students enrolled in recognized non-official schools, including private institutions, are also using the Israeli curriculum. However, Palestinian curriculum classes will continue to be offered in other grades—specifically second through sixth grades and eighth through twelfth grades—and remain prevalent in private and recognized non-official schools.
The shift to the Israeli curriculum in new grades represents a significant development in the education landscape of East Jerusalem, reflecting ongoing tensions and complexities in the governance and cultural identity of the area. While Israeli authorities have promoted this curriculum expansion as a means of standardizing education within the city’s municipal framework, many Palestinian residents view it with skepticism, seeing it as part of broader efforts to assert Israeli sovereignty over East Jerusalem.