Israel police confiscate hundreds of books depicting Palestinian flag from East Jerusalem students

Israeli police officers in Jerusalem, May 2023

Nir Hasson reports in Haaretz on 10 September 2023:

Since the start of the school year, Israeli police officers stationed at the Temple Mount/Al-Aqsa compound have searched the bags of Palestinian high school students wishing to enter and confiscated textbooks depicting the Palestinian flag.

According to East Jerusalem education officials, hundreds of books have been confiscated thus far with police claiming they are incendiary materials.

Around 300 pupils attend three high schools in the Al-Aqsa compound, two for boys and one for girls. The Waqf, the Jordanian custodian of Muslim holy sites in the region, supervises the schools, which teach the Palestinian Authority’s curriculum, as do over 80 percent of schools in East Jerusalem.

For years, Israeli authorities have been censoring the PA books, and reprints them without passages that are considered incitement against Israel. Many schools, however, continue to use the PA’s books. Since the beginning of the school year, police have commenced using a new policy of detaining students and searching their bags, even if they are just passing through the eastern part of the city on their way to school.

Students also testify that books containing an image of the Palestinian flag were confiscated. In several cases, arguments broke out, and police officers pushed students who tried to keep a hold on their books.

The confiscated text books.
One student, Ibrahim, says that he was stopped by police and told to “open the bag.” He said that when police saw Palestinian flags in his books, they confiscated them. Another student, Muhammad, says his geography book was confiscated. “They did it to a lot of my friends from school. The teacher sent us the book on WhatsApp, so we could learn,” he added.

According to a source from the Waqf “The method is now to buy two books, one for home and one for school, so that they don’t walk around with the books. There’s also a thought of buying the children iPods and putting the books there.”

In recent months, coalition members have called for the censoring of teaching materials in East Jerusalem. Two months ago, the Knesset’s education committee, led by Shas MK Yosef Taieb, decided to establish a subcommittee to deal with the issue.

Over the past two weeks, police have taken a tougher line with regard to the Palestinian flag being raised at the weekly Sheikh Jarrah protests. Recently police arrested four people for raising the flag at one of the demonstrations.

A spokesperson for Ir Amim, a nonprofit that promotes an equitable and stable Jerusalem, said that “most of the claims made by Israeli authorities concerning incitement contained in Palestinian textbooks relate to statements in which a different national identity story is told and to claims against the occupation.”

“The right of children in east Jerusalem to study according to their national identity and culture is anchored not only in international conventions, but also in the Oslo Accords,” they added.

In the wake of reports that “inciting content against the State of Israel, including in textbooks, is being brought into educational institutions” the police said in a statement that “they are acting to prevent the illegal bringing” of such materials to the Temple Mount.

The police also said that “In recent days, allegedly inciting materials were found and seized… and teachers were subsequently allowed to enter the educational institutions.”

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