AP: "Hamas is taking control of Palestinian schools"

The Palestinians are becoming more Islamist, which we've known since Hamas was voted in. The mainstream press timidly hints that this is bad from time to time. How bad is it? Is it Al-Qaeda bad? Is it Islamic Brotherhood bad? Is there a difference? This story won't inform you very much about how to make an overall assessment of what this means, but it contains many interesting and useful facts:

Palestinian children spend more of their school day studying Islam. Critical jobs in public education are filled by Islamic stalwarts. A once-banned social studies reader, crammed with hard-line rhetoric, is now in classrooms.

During a year in power, the Islamic Hamas movement has begun taking control of Palestinian schools and is making changes.

Hamas leaders insist they are not trying to indoctrinate children. But moderate Palestinians say Hamas' goal is nothing less than shaping the political views of future generations.

It's a battle for the Palestinian soul, part of a wider Hamas campaign to expand its influence in all spheres of public life, also including newspapers to unions, said Hanan Ashrawi, a secular former minister of higher education.

"You are seeing the gradual transformation of a largely secular national ... education system and curriculum into a more ideological, closed system," said Ashrawi.

Hamas shares power with the moderate Fatah movement it defeated in last year's election, and the terms of that coalition will keep it in control of the Education Ministry for three more years.

Hamas doesn't have completely free rein in the schools. It's being scrutinized by Fatah and by the largely secular Palestinian intelligentsia. Ashrawi, now an independent legislator, says she has asked Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, a moderate who heads Fatah, to hand control of the curriculum to an independent commission of experts, but has gotten no commitment.

It is in Abbas's contract, I understand, that he has to be called "moderate" once per article. Fatah includes something called, I think, the Al-Aqsa Moderate Brigades. Maybe it was Martyrs Brigades. Anyway, it just conducted an elaborate joint operation with Islamic Jihad.

"We are not making education more Islamic," Education Minister Nasser Shaer said before he was arrested by Israel in an anti-Hamas sweep last month. But he is also under pressure within his movement to apply a clearly Islamic, non-Western curriculum. For example: Hamas firebrands want to eliminate U.S. history from a textbook.

So far, Shaer has made only a few changes. He has increased religion classes from three to four a week and allowed a social studies reader with a strong Islamic bent to be used in the classroom.

That pressure is having results.

He has focused mostly on moving Hamas loyalists into key positions in the education system, presumably preparing the ground for tighter control in the future.

When a high-level education job opens up, it goes to a Hamas supporter, with appointees often leapfrogging over other candidates with stronger credentials. Eight of 14 West Bank school districts are now controlled by Hamas, from none a year ago, and the new religion requirement meant hiring some 300 graduates of Islamic teachers' colleges that are Hamas strongholds, Fatah educators say.

Hamas created another power base in education by forming its own teachers' union to compete with the one controlled by Fatah. It claims to have signed up some 18,000 teachers, including those in private schools, but also many of the 40,000 teaching in public schools in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Hamas teachers, many sporting the movement's trademark beards, recently marched through Ramallah, chanting, "Let's restore glory to religion and dignity to the teacher."

Marching and chanting is good exercise.

In some cases, girls are pushed by pro-Hamas teachers to pray and wear head scarves, although no law requires it. Hala Barghouti, 11, from the village of Deir Yassin, said she is transferring from a public school to a private Christian one next year to escape the nagging.

Political tension inside the schools is rising, others say.

Tenth-grader Sumara Awaiseh, a Fatah supporter in a Ramallah school, said he gets into fights with pro-Hamas classmates. "They'll chant something against Fatah and that's how fights get started," he said.

While Fatah supports a Palestinian state alongside Israel, Hamas refuses to recognize the Jewish state and renounce violence.

Don't sentences like this drive you nuts? Fatah refuses to recognize the Jewish state and renounce violence. Hamas would like the world to become a sort-of Islamic Über-Cambodia. Some Hamasniks would, anyway. Others are more extreme.

One of Hamas' first acts after taking control was to lift a ban on private teaching materials, including one that adopts a tough Islamic approach to the conflict with Israel.

That booklet was written by al-Buraq, a Hamas-allied education center shut down by Israel several months ago. The preface says it seeks to "emphasize the Arab and Islamic identity" of the Palestinians, highlight the "brutality of the occupier" and "to create the energy to get rid of all types of occupation."

During the second Palestinian uprising, it says, American cease-fire initiatives "ignored the political rights of the Palestinian people and did not recognize the Palestinian people's right to resistance to regain its rights." In contrast, the draft of a textbook for grades 8-10 on modern Palestinian history, written when Fatah controlled the schools, is a largely matter-of-fact description of events. Fatah educators claim Hamas held up its printing because it's too neutral. Hamas denies it.

Shaer, while removing the ban, hasn't explicitly recommended the al-Buraq booklet to the students -- to the disappointment of the Islamic center which had presumed it now had a sympathetic ear in the ministry. And some Hamas ideologues are getting impatient with the slow pace of change.[...]

Politics, politics--it's the same no matter where you are, right?

Crossposted on Soccer Dad

Tags: Israel, Palestinains, Fatah, Hamas