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Al-Azza Refugee Camp (West Bank), March 29 (AP) — In schools around the world, children are halfway through their second term. But in a Palestinian refugee camp south of Jerusalem, children wake up at 1 p.m.
They play soccer, hang out at barbershops, and browse TikTok aimlessly. They watch TV until dawn, only to get up late and start lazily killing time again.
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Palestinian public schools in the West Bank have been closed since February 5, in one of the longest teachers’ strikes against the cash-strapped Palestinian Authority in recent memory.
Teachers’ demands for a pay rise have escalated into a protest movement, chafing at the increasingly authoritarian Palestinian Authority as the economic crisis deepens.
But the strike isn’t just about the money. Teachers, the largest group of government employees in the West Bank after the security forces, have also called for an elected union.
The authorities have not wavered, fearing that its rivals, such as the Islamist militant group Hamas, could use their campaign against the ruling Fatah party.
“Everything is chaotic,” said Sherin al-Azza, a social worker and mother of five, at a refugee camp called al-Azza, which has become a neighborhood in the West Bank city of Bethlehem.
Determined to educate her children, she scraped together her $200 savings to hire private tutors and send her eldest son to after-school classes during the strike — something she said was not available to most people in the camp. possible.
The Palestinian Authority, led by President Mahmoud Abbas, who rules parts of the West Bank not controlled by Israel, accused striking teachers of abducting some 1 million schoolchildren over their demands for higher wages.
But teachers who have felt undervalued for decades say they have no choice but to step out.
“I feel sorry for the children,” said Mohammed Brijeah, 44, who has been an Arabic language teacher for the past 23 years. “But the way (the Palestinian Authority) treated us was insulting. I want to live with dignity.”
For years, teachers in the West Bank eked out a living on salaries of about $830 a month — far less than other professions that require an equivalent level of education.
Now, a year and a half after the Palestinian Authority slashed government employees’ pay by 20 percent in response to budget shortfalls, teachers say they’ve had enough.
The crisis began in January, when teachers were expected to receive a 15 percent raise as well as back pay under a deal that ended a shorter strike last May.
The agreement also promises to change their representation system, allowing for long-sought union elections. But as the year began, teachers said looking at their pay stubs undermined their trust in officials.
“They lied to us,” said Yousef Ijha, a 37-year-old history teacher in Bethlehem. He and other teachers who have urged the formation of their own independent electoral unions are fighting back against the bloc currently made up of Fatah supporters.
Their movement, mobilized through an anonymous Telegram channel with nearly 20,000 followers, sparked large angry crowds to stage two sit-ins in the city of Ramallah, the seat of the authorities.
Authorities have threatened mass firings and even arrests in response, drawing new attention to what critics say is a crackdown on civil society groups and free speech.
The Department of Education’s lawsuit, filed March 13, lists the names of 151 outspoken teachers who will be fired if they continue the strike and detained if they resist further.
“Not only are we not getting paid, but we’re not actually allowed to speak out,” said Ijha, whose name is on the list.
Ahead of the protests in Ramallah earlier this month, Palestinian security forces set up checkpoints and roadblocks on their way to the city, sending them through rocky hills, according to teachers who took part in the protest.
For Palestinians living under Israeli occupation, the tight security measures tug at darkly familiar chords.
“They made us feel like criminals,” said Omar Mison, 50, a science teacher who said Palestinian police stopped him as he was driving from the West Bank city of Hebron and asked him to show his ID.
Analysts say the increasingly unpopular authorities — widely seen as collaborators with Israel — worry that opposition groups like Hamas could take control of freely elected teachers’ unions, with serious consequences for a large number of important public unions. Labor exerts influence and exacerbates instability in the region.
In 2007, Hamas violently wrested control of the Gaza Strip from Abbas.
“The opposition’s ability to win is a result of the PA’s reduced ability to meet its obligations,” said Ghassan Khatib, a former Palestinian peace negotiator and cabinet minister.
On Monday, the education ministry said it was ready to recruit more than 45,000 teachers on short-term contracts to replace all strikers for the next month, after the teachers’ movement rejected the latest proposal from the Palestinian Authority to gradually compensate them for cuts in their salaries for an unspecified period of time. .
Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Al-Steyer implored teachers to return to school.
“We must fulfill our responsibility to ensure the right to education for our sons and daughters,” Shtayyeh told a cabinet meeting on Monday.
The self-government has faltered as it battles a slowing economy and soaring debt, arguing it cannot afford to pay all its employees.
Earlier this year, the far-right government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided to withhold an additional 50 million shekels (more than $14 million) a month from taxes collected on behalf of the Palestinians, among other punitive measures, further weakened the authority. measure.
“We are in danger of dwindling donor support and enemies denying our existence and perpetuating our financial crisis with unfair cuts,” said government spokesman Ibrahim Melhem. “We have done everything we can.”
Many teachers are skeptical. The movement refused to back down, warning it would pitch tents in Ramallah’s main square and camp out for the remainder of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
As the standoff deepened, parents feared their children were falling too far behind to prepare for the gaokao or even next term.
“This is our lost generation,” said Ahmed, a 43-year-old lawyer and father of six who spoke only by his first name for fear of reprisal.
It was past noon in his sunny apartment, and his children in pajamas staggered into the kitchen to play on their phones, rubbing their eyes to wipe away sleepiness. He and his wife work all day while his children are alone, and he says he can’t get them to stick to a set routine or bedtime.
“As a father, I was miserable,” he said.
His 15-year-old son Athal is very satisfied. “I never want to go back to school,” he said. (Associated Press)
(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)
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