تعليم الفلسطينيين بين الاحتلال والمقاومة

The Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies published the book **Palestinian Education Between Occupation and Resistance**, which was written by Muhammad Ahmed Siam, as part of a series of publications, in 216 pages. This book includes an executive summary, an introduction, six chapters, and a conclusion, in addition to tables, figures, pictures, references, and a general index. It presents an integrated vision related to Israeli colonialism’s targeting of Palestinian education as a pivotal tool for uprooting the people from their roots, by destroying their value, educational, and intellectual systems. Since 1967, the occupation has considered education a strategic security issue. It focused its efforts on disrupting educational institutions, including schools, universities, colleges, kindergartens, libraries, and infrastructure. The targeting extended to depriving Palestinian prisoners in prisons of learning, all the way to assassinating Palestinian scholars to prevent them from developing their people’s awareness and consolidating the demand for freedom among their children, thus highlighting education as a weapon of resistance and a bulwark of identity. Nationalism. The book deals with the relationship of the Israeli occupation with Palestinian education since the first intifada in 1987, highlighting how education has become an arena of strategic conflict in the battle of national awareness. The occupation authorities realized that the Palestinian school is not only a space for teaching knowledge, but it is also an institution capable of producing a national identity and a resistant consciousness that is difficult to subjugate. Therefore, it resorted to systematic policies to disrupt education. From closing schools, to imposing alternative curricula, and considering education itself to be an illegal act. This realization stems from the conviction that education generates cultural capital that supports resilience, according to Paulo Freire, Pierre Bourdieu, and Frantz Fanon, in their talk about the role of education in liberation from domination. ## Colonial targeting of Palestinian education This book shows that the occupation dealt with Palestinian education as a security issue, and not as a human right. It imposed severe restrictions on educational institutions, closed schools and universities, destroyed property, and arrested students and teachers. Targeting reached its peak in Gaza; The schools of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) were bombed and closed. Thousands of students were deprived of their basic right to education. During the period 2015-2019, more than four thousand cases of Israeli violence against students and teachers were recorded, and this number places Palestine at the forefront of the countries most targeted for its education. Moreover, this pattern reflects a colonial vision that strips Palestinians of their eligibility for development, and seeks to turn education into a sterile process or a useless “naked education,” as described by Giorgio Agamben. However, targeting constituted an additional motivation to strengthen adherence to education as a means of resistance.