Tuesday, May 7, 2013

'Jerusalem Day'

 
On 8 May it is Jerusalem Day, the day on which Israelis celebrate the 'unification' of Jerusalem. ACRI, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, published a fact sheet for the occasion, which lists all the 'benefits' that the Palestinians of East-Jerusalem experience since Israel annexed their part of the city after it was conquered in 1967: 

East Jerusalem – Facts and Figures

Population: 371,844 Palestinians, comprising 39% of Jerusalem’s total population.[1]

Poverty Rate: 79.5% of East Jerusalem residents and 85% of East Jerusalem children live below the poverty line – the worst rate of all time.[2] 

Welfare Offices:  3 offices in East Jerusalem serve more than one third of Jerusalem’s population while 18 such offices operate in West Jerusalem; a fourth East Jerusalem office is expected to open; individual social worker’s caseloads in East Jerusalem are approximately double those of West Jerusalem.

Children at Risk:  In 2012, welfare services identified 7,748 at-risk children in East Jerusalem; 86 children who suffered from violence and neglect were taken out of their homes over the past three years; because of the shortage of welfare workers, not all cases are fully and speedily attended to.[3]

Shortage of Classrooms: Only 46% of students study in official municipal schools; there is a chronic shortage of over 1000 classrooms in East Jerusalem; despite commitments made by Israeli authorities to the courts, only several dozen classrooms are built annually.[4]

Shortage of Pre-Kindergartens: There are 10 municipal pre-kindergartens in East Jerusalem as compared to 77 municipal pre-kindergartens in West Jerusalem for the secular sector and 96 for the national-religious sector; a government decision to apply the Free Education Law to children aged 3-4 cannot be implemented across East Jerusalem.

Secondary School and University:  The drop-out rate for 12th graders in East Jerusalem is 40%[5]; students who pass the Palestinian high-school matriculation tests (“Tawjihi”) find it difficult to gain acceptance into Israeli universities; some of the degrees offered by Palestinian universities, including the local Al-Quds University, are not recognized in Israel.

The rest is to be found here on ACRI's site.

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