Nablus, the occupied West Financial institution – For many years, the Zenabia Elementary College has been providing an intimate studying setting to aspiring younger college students from throughout the academic spectrum within the northern West Financial institution metropolis of Nablus.
However now, as a result of Israel’s years-long withholding of tax revenues owed to the Palestinian Authority, the Palestinian faculty system is successfully broke. Like directors in any respect government-run colleges within the West Financial institution, the Zenabia faculty principal, Aisha al-Khatib, is struggling to maintain her small, public faculty in session.
For a lot of the week, the Zenabia faculty is shuttered, and youngsters roam the streets or keep at house. College provides are woefully lacking, with even common schoolbooks now decreased to “bundles of pages”.
“We do all the pieces we are able to, however we don’t have the time or the supplies or the consistency to correctly train our kids and maintain them off the streets,” says al-Khatib. “And that is in every single place within the West Financial institution.”
Concentrating on the training of Palestine’s kids, she says, “means destroying the nation”.
Underneath the course of far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, Israel has systematically been withholding billions of {dollars} in tax revenues over the previous two years that Israel collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority (PA). The measure is partly supposed to punish the PA for its longstanding coverage of paying households of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel for resisting the occupation – even after the PA introduced early final yr that it was reforming such insurance policies.
Public companies have confronted extreme cuts, affecting the salaries of bureaucrats, sanitary employees, and the police.
However probably nowhere has that budgetary disaster been felt greater than within the training sector.
At Zenabia and elsewhere within the West Financial institution, public colleges are at present solely open for a most of three days every week. Lecturers face lengthy stretches of not being paid, and when they’re, they solely obtain about 60 p.c of what they had been incomes earlier than, leading to strikes.
And the results of those cuts in training are displaying up on the times when faculty is in session. Class time is so diminished at Zenabia that academics focus virtually solely on educating arithmetic, Arabic, and English, with topics just like the sciences being primarily lower altogether.
The consequence, educators warn, may very well be lasting instructional gaps for a technology of Palestinian college students.
“As principal of the college, I do know that [the students] will not be [at] the identical [educational] degree as earlier than,” al-Khatib says.
‘We’re at all times absent from faculty’
Spending most of his days out of college, star scholar Zaid Hasseneh, 10, tries to maintain enhancing his English by wanting up phrases on Google Translate. Zaid goals of going to college sometime in the US, with hopes of turning into a health care provider.
“I need my son to develop as much as be cultured – not simply memorise the fabric he learns at college,” says his mom, Eman. “No, I need his cultural information to develop and turn out to be numerous and superior.”
Eman helps Zaid when she will together with his research, however she is busy conserving the household afloat financially after her husband misplaced his work in Israel. Earlier than Israel’s conflict on Gaza started in 2023, Eman’s husband labored in Tel Aviv as a mechanic. After Israel revoked his work allow, together with these of some 150,000 different West Financial institution Palestinians, he has been unable to seek out work. Eman now works in a halawa manufacturing facility as the only real breadwinner.
“I’m going house drained from work, however I’ve to maintain up with [Zaid] commonly,” says Eman. “I inform him, ‘A very powerful factor is finding out. Finding out is crucial for all times.’”
However Eman realises how restricted she is in serving to her son together with his research. “The trainer is aware of one factor, however I don’t know clarify it,” says Eman. “And now, the books [they receive in school] aren’t full books anymore. They’re bundles. Common books are 130 pages, however these are 40 or 50 pages.”
To compound the dearth in class assets, college students and their households describe erratic schedules that make cumulative studying a close to impossibility. “The entire household’s routine is affected,” says Eman.
Even Zaid is now typically spending his days out within the streets quite than finding out within the classroom – or in any other case on his cellphone, taking part in cellular video games.
That’s the case for many college students today.
Muhammad and Ahmed al-Hajj joined Zenabia 4 years in the past as six-year-olds after they confronted excessive bullying in one other faculty. They got here to like the brand new faculty and the intimate setting it provides. However the twins now principally spend their time on their telephones. With their dad and mom additionally struggling to earn sufficient cash to get by, they’re left at house alone throughout their days off from faculty.
“It’s not good in any respect. We’re at all times absent from faculty,” says one of many twins. “It’s not like a full schedule, and we attempt to research as a lot as we are able to, however nonetheless, we don’t be ok with it.”
Some households have switched their kids over to personal colleges, however few can afford to take action. “My [monthly] wage is 2,000 shekels [$650],” explains Eman Hassaneh. “About 1,000 goes in direction of the house hire. One other 500 goes in direction of payments. And solely little or no is left for meals. I can’t additionally deal with his training.”
Lecturers quitting, and mounting dropouts
Collectively, the PA’s multi-year finances cuts of billions of {dollars} are shrinking each the attendance of scholars and the variety of academics, too.
“Most of the academics left working within the colleges to work in factories as a result of they don’t get sufficient wage,” says al-Khatib. “They usually don’t really feel that they’re giving what they should give the scholars.”
Tamara Shtayeh, a trainer at Zenabia, these days solely teaches maths, English, and Arabic as a result of decreased funding. “As a trainer, the three-day answer is a nasty answer as a result of it doesn’t cowl the minimal training that’s wanted,” she stated. “Not for the scholars, and never for the academics as nicely.”
On account of her decreased wage, Shtayeh, a mom of three ladies, is promoting merchandise on-line on the aspect to assist her household. Even the college’s principal, al-Khatib, says she will now solely afford to ship certainly one of her two college-age daughters to college, with the opposite daughter staying at house.
College hours are decreased even additional as Israeli troopers commonly raid the encircling areas, closing the college each time they accomplish that. With the disaster stretching on for years now, Shtayeh is sensing a generational hole widening between the earlier technology that obtained 5 days of college, and this one going to highschool for about half of that.
Shtayeh and al-Khatib fear concerning the lack of routine within the kids’s lives. For each scholar like Zaid, who’s dedicated to educating himself regardless of the circumstances, many extra college students are dropping out of the system altogether.
![Abu Zaid al-Hajj with his twin sons, Muhammad and Ahmed, age 10 [Al Jazeera]](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Abu-Zaid-Al-Hajj-with-his-sons-Muhammad-and-Ahmed-2-1770951593.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C578&quality=80)
Not removed from Zenabia, Talal Adabiq, 15, now spends his days promoting sweets and drinks for eight hours a day on the streets of Nablus.
“I don’t actually like faculty,” says Talal. “I want working.”
Talal informed his dad and mom a couple of yr in the past that he needed to drop out of college. Although they needed him to proceed his research, he informed them he didn’t discover a lot use for college anymore – and he used the irregular faculty schedule to show his level.
Providing to assist assist his struggling household financially, Talal subsequently dropped out of al-Kindi College. He now makes “about 40 to 50 shekels a day” ($13-16) hawking road items.
As he sells lollipops and different sweets on a Tuesday afternoon, a number of teenage boys seemed on close by. They are saying they’re nonetheless in class, however on this budget-mandated time off, a few of the boys joke about how “enjoyable” it could be to not go to highschool in any respect.
Talal, in the meantime, shrugs off questions on what dropping out of college portends for his future. “God keen, issues might be higher,” says Talal. “I don’t understand how.”
Within the estimations of educators and representatives from the Palestinian Authority, about 5 to 10 p.c of scholars have dropped out of college within the West Financial institution prior to now two years.
‘Our youngsters deserve an opportunity at life’
Whereas huge finances cuts roil the training sector, the Palestinian Authority is struggling to provide you with options as its budgetary woes deepen – and schoolchildren in any other case face threats, violence and demolitions by the hands of Israeli troopers, settlers and the Israeli Civil Administration.
Even earlier than the conflict on Gaza started, the college sector was dealing with a wide range of crises, with trainer strikes commonplace, in addition to Israeli assaults on faculty infrastructure and youngsters on their approach to class, with at least 36 demolitions of 20 schools between 2010 and 2023.
However systemic attacks on education are actually intensifying. In line with Ghassan Daghlas, the governor of Nablus, in his district alone, three colleges have been attacked within the final two months by settlers. In close by Jalud final month, settlers set a school on fire. The rise in violence is leaving college students without delay traumatised and scared of going to highschool, says Daghlas.
“Prior to now three months, a lot of the invasions that concentrate on properties within the Nablus district are focusing on schoolchildren. They may take the child together with one of many dad and mom. They topic them to interrogation for a number of hours,” says the governor. “What sort of psychological state will the scholars have after these interrogations?”
In line with PA estimates, greater than 84,000 college students within the West Financial institution have had their training disrupted by incidents together with settler assaults, army raids and demolitions of faculties. Greater than 80 colleges serving roughly 13,000 college students are underneath menace of full or partial demolition by Israeli authorities within the West Financial institution and occupied East Jerusalem. Between July and September 2025 alone, greater than 90 such education-related incidents had been documented within the West Financial institution.
In Space C – the 60 p.c of the West Financial institution underneath full Israeli army management – college students from remoted villages generally need to stroll a number of kilometres to achieve their colleges, during which they commonly face harassment or assaults from settlers in addition to troopers on the best way, with a rising pattern in settler outposts intentionally positioned near schools.
“These will not be particular person acts by some violent settlers,” says Mahmoud al-Aloul, the vice chairman of the central committee of Fatah, the Palestinian Authority’s ruling political social gathering. “Fairly, it’s a basic coverage that’s supported by the occupation.”
In 2025, Nablus governorate alone had 19 college students killed by Israeli military gunfire, based on Daghlas. A complete of 240 had been injured.
Training officers say the longer the disaster persists, the better the long-term affect might be as trainer attrition, interrupted studying and rising dropout charges compound over time.
“The continuation of the disaster means risking long-term institutional erosion, during which short-term options turn out to be everlasting, and the regime turns into much less capable of restore its earlier degree of high quality, effectivity and justice,” says Refaat Sabbah, the president of the World Marketing campaign for Training. “Saving training as we speak shouldn’t be a sectoral possibility, however a strategic necessity to guard society and its future.”
For Eman Hassaneh, meaning safeguarding her son Zaid’s future hopes and goals. “We hope all of those boundaries to training gained’t really have an effect on our kids and their ardour for studying,” she says.
“Our youngsters deserve an opportunity at life.”
