Palestinian education in East Jerusalem is under mounting pressure as Israel restricts teacher entry permits and links school funding to adoption of the Israeli curriculum.

About 180 Palestinian teachers have been told their travel permits into East Jerusalem will not be renewed when they expire at the end of the 2026 to 27 academic year. Many commute daily from the occupied West Bank through Israeli checkpoints. Even when permits are issued they are tightly limited by hours and location: holders may not exceed set times, may not go anywhere except the school, and since the Gaza war began in 2023 have been barred from accompanying students on trips or visiting Al Aqsa for prayer.

Permit delays already disrupted this year. Documents arrived only on 15 September, two weeks after term began, and similar delays in January triggered school strikes meant to show a united front. Teachers were also blocked from entering Jerusalem for a full week during the recent Jewish holiday of Sukkot.

Wider policies sit under a government plan framed as reducing socioeconomic gaps in East Jerusalem, whose population remains majority Palestinian despite settlement growth. Roughly half the education budget under that plan goes toward expanding teaching of the Israeli curriculum. New state funded schools must adopt that curriculum as a condition of opening, which rights monitors describe as pressure on schools and parents to abandon the Palestinian programme. Teacher training inside the Israeli education system is being expanded alongside those incentives.

An Israeli human rights organisation, Ir Amim, has warned that the measures exploit genuine educational needs to erode Palestinian educational autonomy and national identity. A separate law barring employment of teachers with degrees from Palestinian universities is expected to deepen an already severe staffing shortage.

East Jerusalem, like the West Bank, is occupied Palestinian territory under international law, though Israel treats it as part of a unified capital under its control. Teachers who have spent decades crossing checkpoints say the latest permit cuts may finally force them out of classrooms they have staffed for years, accelerating a shift toward Israeli supervised schooling in the eastern half of the city.