The New York Times · New York, New York · 9 January 1994

CP-1994-061

Building Peace in Palestinian Schools

By Joel Greenberg

Scan 484 × 940 pixels

Transcribed from the clipping

JERUSALEM HASSAN Abu Ghosh, principal of the Abdullah Ibn Hussein High School for Palestinian boys in East Jerusalem, says he has little use for a study booklet on peace that he recently received from the Israeli Ministry of Education.

“We leave it here in the office — we don’t use it,” he said, picking up the collection of readings published after the signing of the peace agreement between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization. “What peace are they talking about? My son is a prisoner, half paralyzed, and still in jail. We’ve had pupils arrested.” Mr.

Abu Ghosh waved a newspaper report about a brawl at the school between opponents and supporters of the accord. His assistant, Muhammad Mudlij, said, “We can’t discuss the agreement in class, because things would get out of control.”

Politically polarized and plagued by clashes between pupils and Israeli soldiers, Palestinian schools seem hardly the place where the foundations of Arab-Jewish coexistence are going to be built.

Yet a team of Palestinian experts has been at work for half a year on the first Palestinian national school curriculum, based on principles of pluralism, tolerance and “value-free” instruction.

The 124 planners hope to put the curriculum into effect during the expected interim stage of Palestinian self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, beginning with a trial run in the next school year.

In its declared goals, the curriculum seeks to undo the legacy of decades of schooling under foreign rule — going back well before the Israeli occupation in 1967 — and the effects of years of political turmoil in the occupied territories.

During the six-year-old Palestinian uprising, or intifada, against Israel, Arab schools were closed for months by the Israeli military government on the grounds that they had become centers of violent anti-Israeli protest. When they were not shut by the Israeli authorities, they often were closed by Palestinian protest strikes.

Over the years, scores of pupils have been killed in stone-throwing clashes with the Israeli Army, and thousands arrested.

How this transcription was made

Read from the scan by a machine looking at the image of the page, not by optical character recognition and not by a person. The clipping carries no masthead and no dated folio line, so the date recorded here could not be checked against anything printed on the page. Nothing on the page contradicts it.

Cite this clipping

More from The New York Times

• The Maine Colony in PalestineThe New York Times · 12 November 1866
• Jewish Colonization in PalestineThe New York Times · 9 December 1883
• Jewish State in Palestine OpposedThe New York Times · 9 July 1897
• ZIONIST CONGRESS IN BASELThe New York Times · 31 August 1897
• ROME FEARS THE ZIONISTSThe New York Times · 12 September 1897
• PROGRESS OF ZIONISMThe New York Times · 16 December 1901
• 852 more from this paper in the full text →

More from the 1990s

• Gaza life after darkThe Town Talk · 8 January 1994
• Medicine in Gaza lags behind IsraelThe Houston Post · 16 January 1994
• To Read All About It, Palestinians Scan the WallsThe New York Times · 24 January 1994
• Palestinian photographer beaten by Israeli troopsThe Bay City Times · 29 January 1994
• Israelis shoot 12-year-oldSunday Telegraph · 6 February 1994
• Palestinian women establish shelters, rape hotlinesThe Monitor · 15 February 1994
• All 374 clippings from the 1990s →