Knesset advances bills to tighten grip over Arab schools, ease restriction on firing Arab teachers

A school in the northern city of Kafr Qasim, in 2019

Noa Shpigel and Shira Kadari-Ovadia report in Haaretz on 31 May 2023:

The Knesset advanced two bills on Wednesday that would increase monitoring of Arab schools and teachers by upping the Israeli secret service’s background checks on staff and making it easier to fire teachers who “identify with a terror organization.” The bills, which critics charge poses serious threats to freedom of expression, have already been approved by the Ministerial Committee on Legislation earlier this week.

45 lawmakers voted to advance the bills while 25 voted against. The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) has expressed concern that the bills are meant to pave the path for restoring Shin Bet oversight over the Arab school system, which was only scrapped after several decades in 2005.

Submitted by Likud lawmaker Amit Halevy and others Likud MKs, the bills seek to make the licensing of schools contingent upon their “accommodating the fundamental requirements of the Israeli school system.”

Formulated as an amendment to the Law on the Supervision of Schools, the legislation seek to set stricter criteria for obtaining a teaching license. If passed, they would require the Education Ministry to conduct a security background check on every potential teacher. They further require teaching candidates to prove they have no “affinity for terrorism.”

The Education Ministry director-general would further be obligated to cancel the employment permit of a worker who was convicted of terrorism, and to suspend the teaching license of teachers who are facing criminal proceedings on suspicion of committing a terrorism-related offense.

The bills’ explanatory notes state that the reason for the stricter guidelines is “the fertile ground of wild incitement that exists in the schools in which the Palestinian curriculum is taught in East Jerusalem, the delegitimization and demonization of the Jewish people and Israel and the glorification of terrorists and terrorist activity.”

A similar argument was given for another bill currently on hold which seeks to deny funding for schools that follow the Palestinian curriculum.

The Law for Supervision of Schools already allows for the possibility of revoking the license of a teacher who is charged with an offense “whose substance, seriousness or circumstances mean that this person cannot appropriately work in education.”

ACRI ttorneys Tal Hassin and Gadeer Nicola from ACRI have clarified that the bills would not increase the Education Ministry’s authority to supervise curricula and teachers, as this is already enshrined in Israeli law.    “In keeping with its authors’ worldview, all this bill seeks to achieve is to police the Arab and Palestinian school system and control it,” said a statement by ACRI. “[It seeks to] require monitoring of its educators and to implement a suspicious, racist and divisive attitude toward the Palestinian society in Israel.”

Another bill, submitted by Otzma Yehudit lawmaker Zvika Fogel, seeks to form a committee that will be authorized to fire teachers who are involved in supporting terror or belong to a terror organization. It would include at least five members appointed by the education minister, together with representatives of the Israeli police, the Shin Bet and the Local Government. 45 lawmakers voted to advance the bill, while 23 have voted against it.

Fogel’s bill determines that the committee will have the authority to revoke the appointment or continued employment of a school staff member after a hearing, if the person has expressed support for armed struggle of an enemy country or terror organization, an act of terror or terror organization, or if they belong to a terror organization. In such a case, the bill calls for the employee to be terminated within 30 days.

Fogel’s bill was submitted in the previous Knesset by his party chairman Itamar Ben-Gvir, and in the current Knesset, a similar bill was submitted by lawmaker Sharren Haskel of the National Unity party.

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