Palestinian teachers are dealing with a failing education system, battered by decades of bloody conflict and now a wall dividing the land. Rob Durbridge reports.

I met Palestinian Teachers' Union President Muhammad Sowan in chilly Yorkshire far from the turmoil of his own country. We were attending the conference of the UK National Union of Teachers which has had a long friendship with his union. He is a quietly spoken man who represents 40,000 teachers employed by the Palestinian Authority in private, public and UN refugee schools. Sixty per cent of the teachers are women.

The authority receives some funds from donors including the EU, Japan and some Arab countries. Some funds are paid directly, but other money such as that collected in taxes and duties by Israel is often withheld. In recent times teachers' salaries have been cut off as punishment for the protests which have been occurring against Israel's Sharon government. There is discrimination in pay scales as well. Palestinian teachers get paid at less than half the rate of their Israeli counterparts even though they are formally working in the same economy.

Teachers are trained at universities in Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Gaza, Berzit, Jenin and Nablus, and also undertake in-service courses. Palestinian students have a great desire to learn, and to develop their social and economical status, Sowan says, and their results are the highest in the region.

“Teachers and students go to school despite the checkpoints and the harassment,” says Sowan. “Sometimes we have to start travelling between 4am and 8am and cross the fields where our clothes get dirty and wet.

“We believe peace is the solution to our national crisis, even a peace based on the 22 per cent of our original land which is provided for in UN resolution 242,” he says. “But there is no justice in the world for the victims. We have been abandoned—even by the rest of the Middle East. Unlike all Israelis, our teachers do not know how to use guns. We don't have compulsory military service and don't use weapons.

“We cannot live in our communities with this terrible wall being built across our land. This destroys the Road Map to peace and we cannot understand why the world is silent about this. It separates people from their land, teachers from their schools. Sometimes we can cross, at other times not.

“In some cities like Bateer, in Bethlehem District, one of the schools is divided into two—one inside the green line and the other half inside the wall—to exclude the Palestinians. This is causing great problems for the teachers and students.

“In Palestine, a person can't and will never be able to predict what will happen the next day. One day people are living in peace and harmony, and the next day you can find tanks, shooting and killing, and curfews.

“As for the Gaza strip, the situation there is indescribable. Many students and teachers have been killed during this scholastic year. The educational situation is deteriorating and the students are not benefiting from it very much. One of the schools in the Rafah refugee camp has been transformed into housing for the people who lost their houses due to action by the Israelis.”

ROB DURBRIDGE is the federal secretary of the AEU.