Palestinian history lessons

As a Citizenship teacher, one of the questions I was interested in exploring as part of our exchange was how young people learn about the history of Palestine and make sense of the situation in which they live.

It quickly became apparent that this learning was not confined to classrooms. Young people live and breathe the history of Palestine. It is in the names of the villages their families were forced to leave in 1948; the keys to their homes there; the scars, losses and tales of imprisonment of friends and family members; the coloured passes that control their movements; the friends and family members, views of olive trees and the Al-Aqsa mosque that they can't visit on the other side of the wall.

Our own learning began with the revelation that the place we were staying for the weekend residential, now a youth and sports centre, had been first a British and then Israeli interrogation centre, where some of the teachers we are working with had been imprisoned and tortured by Israeli security. It continued with the powerful stories of all of the amazing people we have met this week.

Visiting refugee camps also made it very clear what 68 years of occupation means. This challenged conceptions of what a refugee is and what a refugee camp looks like. Fara and Jalazone camps were not short term structures for people to stay in before seeking safety elsewhere, but now a built up record of how long Palestinian people have been hoping and struggling to return to their own homes.

Palestinian history, culture and identity is certainly a key part of the curriculum (shockingly censored in the Jerusalem schools run by the Israeli Ministry of Education), but asking about how this is taught in schools threw up a more pressing question for us – why is it not taught in our own schools? Visit after visit, we have been welcomed with open arms as people from Britain, but also reminded of Britain’s responsibility for the occupation, with the British Mandate and Balfour Declaration giving away land that didn’t belong to Britain to people who didn’t live there.

An important part of the history of Palestine is the international community not meeting their responsibilities towards Palestinian people, turning a blind eye to flouted UN resolutions, torture in Israeli prisons, the betrayal of the Oslo agreement, illegal settlements, the racist separation wall and countless other violations of human rights. Disturbingly, we have also heard that the UN Refugee Welfare Agency has been withdrawing funding from health and education services in refugee camps – as if it is giving up on Palestinian people returning to their homeland and would rather see them ‘move on’, out of refugee camps, even out of their country to Jordan.

So little is known about the realities of the occupation of Palestine in the UK. Media reports present flashpoints in a conflict rather than an occupation that has lasted 68 years. Higher profile is given to acts of violence coming from Palestinians than the daily violence of the Israeli state. With gaping holes in the UK curriculum and misinformation in the media, twinning projects such as this one are so important for making sure that people in the UK can begin to understand what occupation means and build effective solidarity with Palestinian people in their inspiring struggle for justice.

Thank you so much to everyone we have met over the last 10 days, for sharing your stories and welcoming us into your schools and communities.