Nablus, the occupied West Financial institution – For many years, the Zenabia Elementary Faculty has been providing an intimate studying setting to aspiring younger college students from throughout the tutorial spectrum within the northern West Financial institution metropolis of Nablus.
However now, attributable to Israel’s years-long withholding of tax revenues owed to the Palestinian Authority, the Palestinian college system is successfully broke. Like directors in any respect government-run colleges within the West Financial institution, the Zenabia college principal, Aisha al-Khatib, is struggling to maintain her small, public college in session.
For a lot of the week, the Zenabia college is shuttered, and youngsters roam the streets or keep at dwelling. Faculty provides are woefully lacking, with even common schoolbooks now decreased to “bundles of pages”.
“We do the whole lot we will, however we should not have the time or the supplies or the consistency to correctly train our youngsters and hold them off the streets,” says al-Khatib. “And that is in every single place within the West Financial institution.”
Focusing on the schooling of Palestine’s youngsters, she says, “means destroying the nation”.
Below the route 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 meant 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 presumably nowhere has that budgetary disaster been felt greater than within the schooling sector.
At Zenabia and elsewhere within the West Financial institution, public colleges are presently solely open for a most of three days per week. Lecturers face lengthy stretches of not being paid, and when they’re, they solely obtain about 60 % of what they have been incomes earlier than, leading to strikes.
And the consequences of those cuts in schooling are displaying up on the times when college is in session. Class time is so diminished at Zenabia that lecturers focus virtually solely on instructing arithmetic, Arabic, and English, with topics just like the sciences being primarily lower altogether.
The outcome, educators warn, may very well be lasting instructional gaps for a era of Palestinian college students.
“As principal of the varsity, I do know that [the students] are usually not [at] the identical [educational] degree as earlier than,” al-Khatib says.
‘We’re at all times absent from college’
Spending most of his days out of faculty, star pupil 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 changing 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 into numerous and superior.”
Eman helps Zaid when she will be able to along with his research, however she is busy protecting the household afloat financially after her husband misplaced his work in Israel. Earlier than Israel’s struggle 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 search out work. Eman now works in a halawa manufacturing facility as the only breadwinner.
“I’m going dwelling drained from work, however I’ve to maintain up with [Zaid] frequently,” says Eman. “I inform him, ‘An important factor is finding out. Finding out is important for all times.’”
However Eman realises how restricted she is in serving to her son along with his research. “The trainer is aware of one factor, however I don’t know the best way to 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 at school 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 fairly than finding out within the classroom – or in any other case on his telephone, taking part in cell video games.
That’s the case for many college students nowadays.
Muhammad and Ahmed al-Hajj joined Zenabia 4 years in the past as six-year-olds once they confronted excessive bullying in one other college. They got here to like the brand new college and the intimate setting it provides. However the twins now largely spend their time on their telephones. With their mother and father additionally struggling to earn sufficient cash to get by, they’re left at dwelling alone throughout their days off from college.
“It’s not good in any respect. We’re at all times absent from college,” says one of many twins. “It’s not like a full schedule, and we attempt to research as a lot as we will, however nonetheless, we don’t be ok with it.”
Some households have switched their youngsters over to non-public colleges, however few can afford to take action. “My [monthly] wage is 2,000 shekels [$650],” explains Eman Hassaneh. “About 1,000 goes in the direction of the house hire. One other 500 goes in the direction of payments. And solely little or no is left for meals. I can not additionally maintain his schooling.”
Lecturers quitting, and mounting dropouts
Collectively, the PA’s multi-year funds cuts of billions of {dollars} are shrinking each the attendance of scholars and the variety of lecturers, too.
“Lots of the lecturers left working within the colleges to work in factories as a result of they don’t get sufficient wage,” says al-Khatib. “And so they 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 resolution is a nasty resolution as a result of it doesn’t cowl the minimal schooling that’s wanted,” she stated. “Not for the scholars, and never for the lecturers as effectively.”
Because of her decreased wage, Shtayeh, a mom of three women, is promoting merchandise on-line on the aspect to assist her household. Even the varsity’s principal, al-Khatib, says she will be able to now solely afford to ship one among her two college-age daughters to college, with the opposite daughter staying at dwelling.
Faculty hours are decreased even additional as Israeli troopers frequently raid the encompassing areas, closing the varsity each time they accomplish that. With the disaster stretching on for years now, Shtayeh is sensing a generational hole widening between the earlier era that acquired 5 days of faculty, and this one going to highschool for about half of that.
Shtayeh and al-Khatib fear concerning the lack of routine within the youngsters’s lives. For each pupil 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 college,” says Talal. “I desire working.”
Talal advised his mother and father a couple of yr in the past that he needed to drop out of faculty. Although they needed him to proceed his research, he advised them he didn’t discover a lot use for varsity anymore – and he used the irregular college schedule to show his level.
Providing to assist assist his struggling household financially, Talal subsequently dropped out of al-Kindi Faculty. 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 appeared on close by. They are saying they’re nonetheless at school, however on this budget-mandated break day, a few of the boys joke about how “enjoyable” it might be to not go to highschool in any respect.
Talal, in the meantime, shrugs off questions on what dropping out of faculty portends for his future. “God prepared, issues can be higher,” says Talal. “I don’t know the way.”
Within the estimations of educators and representatives from the Palestinian Authority, about 5 to 10 % of scholars have dropped out of faculty within the West Financial institution prior to now two years.
‘Our youngsters deserve an opportunity at life’
Whereas huge funds cuts roil the schooling sector, the Palestinian Authority is struggling to give you 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 struggle on Gaza started, the varsity sector was dealing with quite a lot of crises, with trainer strikes commonplace, in addition to Israeli assaults on college infrastructure and youngsters on their method to class, with at least 36 demolitions of 20 schools between 2010 and 2023.
However systemic attacks on education at the moment are 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 directly traumatised and frightened of going to highschool, says Daghlas.
“Up to now three months, a lot of the invasions that concentrate on properties within the Nablus district are concentrating on schoolchildren. They’ll take the child together with one of many mother and father. They topic them to interrogation for just a few 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 schooling disrupted by incidents together with settler assaults, navy raids and demolitions of colleges. Greater than 80 colleges serving roughly 13,000 college students are beneath 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 have been documented within the West Financial institution.
In Space C – the 60 % of the West Financial institution beneath full Israeli navy management – college students from remoted villages generally need to stroll a number of kilometres to achieve their colleges, during which they frequently face harassment or assaults from settlers in addition to troopers on the way in which, with a rising pattern in settler outposts intentionally positioned near schools.
“These are usually not 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 occasion. “Quite, 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 have been injured.
Schooling officers say the longer the disaster persists, the larger the long-term influence can 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 into everlasting, and the regime turns into much less in a position to restore its earlier degree of high quality, effectivity and justice,” says Refaat Sabbah, the president of the International Marketing campaign for Schooling. “Saving schooling at present is just not a sectoral choice, however a strategic necessity to guard society and its future.”
For Eman Hassaneh, which means safeguarding her son Zaid’s future hopes and goals. “We hope all of those obstacles to schooling gained’t truly have an effect on our youngsters and their ardour for studying,” she says.
“Our youngsters deserve an opportunity at life.”
