Hundreds of East Jerusalem children have no room in schools

[Violet_Crumble]

Eleven-year-old Tahrir Jabar had her school bag packed a week ago to start seventh grade. She covered the old books she had borrowed from her elder sisters with colorful paper and put all her pens and pencils in her Paula pencil case - the East Jerusalem version of Barbie who wears a prudish long sweater.

But when the school year began, the nearest school in the Shuafat neighborhood could not take her due to a lack of space, and the city could not find another school for her.

There are no places in schools for hundreds of East Jerusalem children due to the intolerable conditions in East Jerusalem's school system, and the children are doomed to remain at home.

Another 10,000-plus children from the Jabel Muchbar and Silwan neighborhoods also have not started school this year, after their parents called a strike to protest the unbearably crowded conditions and shortage of classrooms in the schools.

"The municipality is practicing deliberate discrimination against East Jerusalem," says Ismail Shakart, chairman of the Jabel Muchbar neighborhood committee.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/623438.html