Petition against the Demolition of Fasayil School in Palestine
URGENT CALL
Palestinian Primary School in Fasayil to be demolished on the 29th of November!
Education not Occupation
Stop the Occupation from destroying yet another community project aimed atbuilding a future for PalestiniansThis summer, the Popular Committee of Fasayil together with the Palestinian Save the Jordan Valley Initiative of the Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign and the Brighton Tubas Friendship and Solidarity Group, started to build the first and only primary school in Fasayil in the heart of the Jordan Valley. The grassroot project is part of the twinning between community groups in Brighton and in Palestine.
In defiance of the Israeli occupation’s complete ban on house construction, the shell of the new school has been completed in September. The school was built out of traditional mud bricks, using traditional building techniques and will provide a resource for more than 115 children. It aims at resolving the grave educational crisis that is affecting Fasayil and many other communities in the Jordan Valley caused by military restrictions imposed by the Israeli occupation forces.
Education is a crucial tool for empowering Palestinian children to confront the harsh life under occupation, opening a perspective that goes beyond a future as slave labourers in the occupation’s settlement plantations.
On Thursday, the 17th of October, however, the so-called ‘Military Civil Administration’ issued an injuction on the building of the school as well as yet another Palestinian family’s home in the village. Construction work requires a permit from the occupation authorities, but since the occupation of the West Bank in 1967, not one has been granted. The systematic ban on construction is clearly aimed at driving Palestinians out of the Jordan Valley. This ban is part a systematic policy of ethnic cleansing by the Israeli state.
According to the injunction issued against the primary school, the community has to apply for a permit by 29th November. Permits are never issued in Fasayil as the land is designated as ‘agricultural’ by the Israeli authorites. The military could demolish the school soon after the 29th.But villagers and local activists are defiant:
“They can knock our school down as often as they want. We cannot stop them from doing so. We will build the school again and again and again. They cannot destroy our determination to give proper education to our children.”
“Our children’s education is our future! They will not succeed in their attempts
to drive us from our land.”
We are calling on all free-minded people around the world, the media and the international community to get active to prevent the Israeli occupation forces from destroying Fasayil’s primary school!
Defend the children’s right to education!
Sign the petition: here. If you are an arch-peace member or arch-peace friend please consider signing: your name, Architects for Peace.
Find more: Brighton-Tubas Solidaritiy Group
See images of Fasayil' school construction process: here
Permission for republishing this article has been granted by the Brighton-Tubas Solidaritiy Group
0 comments:
Post a Comment