by Ilaria Masieri, co-Desk Officer Palestine and Lebanon

Amal is a 7-year-old girl in second grade. Her school is housed in a small building in the heart of the old city of Jerusalem. It is, in fact, an apartment, rented by the directorate for Education, which is responsible for Palestinian public schools in East Jerusalem. The school is in need of renovation, but the Israeli authorities, who have occupied the city since 1967, do not grant the permits.

Amal's story

Every morning, Amal walks through the alleyways of the old city with her backpack on her shoulders. She is used to the cameras, the soldiers, the constant checks. Fifty years of occupation have profoundly changed the face of her city, and the intensification of the conflict, since autumn 2015, has produced a vertiginous rise in episodes of violence, abuse, mistreatment and arrests, particularly among young people and children. Even schools are not spared: Amal's school, too, has been raided more than once, without warning, during lessons.

Amal lives with her mother, her maternal grandmother and her three sisters. Her father left the family a few years ago, remarried and moved away. No one knows anything about him, and he contributes nothing to the upkeep of his first family. Among the memories he left behind are the marks of violence and burns on the body of one of his daughters. Amal's mother did not study, married very young, and now supports her daughters on her mother's small pension. Six women, three generations, confined to a single small room, with an outdoor kitchen and bathroom.

Life in East Jerusalem

In East Jerusalem, 300,000 Palestinians live in inhumane conditions. The discriminatory policies implemented by the Israeli authorities — including the demolition of hundreds of Palestinian homes every year, the denial of construction and renovation permits for public and private buildings, and the ongoing construction of settlements in the Palestinian part of the city — have forced at least 100,000 Palestinians to leave Jerusalem in recent years. The rest continue to live there in conditions of extreme deprivation and danger.

Half of the Palestinian population consists of minors, for whom the Palestinian Authority — whose jurisdiction does not extend to Jerusalem — cannot guarantee even the basics. Schools and hospitals offer poor services in overcrowded facilities, play spaces are extremely limited, as are opportunities to move about freely. Every day, around 1,000 students and 200 teachers are forced to cross military checkpoints to reach school. Cut off from the rest of the occupied Palestinian territories by the separation wall and deprived of essential services, the children of Jerusalem are constantly exposed to violence, social exclusion and a lack of safe spaces.

Children of the so-called "dropout generation" — mothers and fathers who left school with no qualifications — and helpless witnesses to the economic and cultural impoverishment of their communities, boys and girls have no spaces in which to live their childhood serenely or to receive assistance and support. The school system is short of around 2,200 classrooms and is unable to respond to the growing distress of its students: this situation is producing a steady decline in both school attendance and academic results, effectively consigning yet another generation of young people to a future without prospects.

Some figures on children in East Jerusalem

83.9% of children in Jerusalem (more than 125,000) live below the poverty line

Between 10,000 and 14,000 children have no identity documents and therefore have no access to services

2,200 school classrooms are missing and 43% of existing ones are inadequate

5 public schools are at risk of demolition

33% of children do not complete compulsory education

Every day 1,000 students and 200 teachers cross a checkpoint to get to school

Every year around 700 Palestinian children are arrested in Jerusalem

The charge is most commonly stone-throwing (penalty: up to 20 years' imprisonment)

75% of arrested minors report having suffered physical and verbal violence during detention (torture, threats, beatings)

97% are questioned without their parents present

Data provided by Terre des Hommes

Terre des Hommes in Jerusalem for children

Terre des Hommes has been working in Jerusalem since 2012, with inclusive education projects aimed at improving existing educational services and supporting the development of a higher-quality inclusive education system for the students who attend, free of charge, the 48 public schools of East Jerusalem. These overcrowded schools offer a modest standard of education and have neither the space nor the resources to complement the learning process with sporting and play activities, which are essential for children's healthy development. Our interventions promote an inclusive vision based on the Index for Inclusion model. The aim is to facilitate the access and participation of pupils with special educational needs by implementing changes that benefit the entire school community, and by promoting a social model that welcomes and values difference.

The interventions of Terre des Hommes are funded by the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation, the European Union and the Uefa foundation for children, and address structural issues such as staff training, the availability of support teachers and the quality of support itself. They also promote pupil participation, the organisation of extra-school and extracurricular activities, and school-family interaction, creating an educational community in which all parties cooperate towards the growth and education of the child.

When she grows up, Amal would like to be a teacher, and we would like to see the aspirations of so many children like her fulfilled — to help build a just and welcoming society in which the rights of everyone, and above all of the youngest, are respected without any discrimination.