Photo taken on Sept. 19, 2022 shows an empty Palestinian school in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan.(Photo: Xinhua)

 

Photo taken on Sept. 19, 2022 shows an empty classroom of a Palestinian school in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan.(Photo: Xinhua)

 

Photo taken on Sept. 19, 2022 shows an empty playground of a Palestinian school in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan.(Photo: Xinhua)

 
Some 150 Palestinian schools in East Jerusalem on Monday shut their doors to protest against attempts of the Israeli government to censor the textbooks and impose the Israeli curriculum in classrooms.

About 100,000 students refrained from going to their schools in compliance with the strike, a warning step after the Israeli government began taking punitive measures against schools to force them to "drop the Palestinian narrative from the curricula they teach and to include the Israeli narrative only," official Palestinian news agency WAFA reported.

Ziad al-Shamali, head of the Union of Parents in East Jerusalem, told Qatar-based Al Jazeera that if Israel's efforts succeed, it "will have control over the education of 90 percent of our students in Jerusalem."

Some 115,000 students from kindergarten to grade 12 attend more than 280 Palestinian schools in Jerusalem, according to al-Shamali.

On Sunday night, videos went viral on social media platforms, in which residents of East Jerusalem hung up posters reading "general strike - yes to the Palestinian curriculum, no to the distorted curriculum."

In late July, Israel revoked the permanent licenses of six Palestinian schools in East Jerusalem, citing that their textbooks contain content deemed as "incitement" against Israel and its military.

For decades, disputes over the textbooks used by Palestinian schools in East Jerusalem have existed between the two sides. The Palestinians slam Israel for interfering in their choice of textbooks and hindering them from receiving financial assistance for education from international organizations and Western countries.

Israel occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem, both claimed by the Palestinians, in the 1967 Middle East war, and has controlled them ever since.