A GAZA, pour la première fois, l’hébreu est inscrit au programme des écoliers et à l’université.
MIFTAH - Hamas puts Hebrew on the curriculum for the first time in 20 years
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In a crowded classroom in Gaza City, hands shoot in the air when teacher Moussa Ziara asks for a volunteer to come to the blackboard. The chosen boy carefully chalks a letter of the alphabet amid enthusiastic applause from his classmates.
It is not, perhaps, an atypical scene in a place where education is highly valued. What is unusual, however, is that these Palestinian boys are studying Hebrew; part of a resurgence in learning the “language of the enemy”, fostered – remarkably – by Gaza’s Hamas government.
Around 750 ninth-grade pupils in Hamas-run schools have begun studying Hebrew in a pilot scheme that could be extended in the coming years. It is the first time for almost two decades that the language of Israel is on the school curriculum.
And at the Islamic University in Gaza City, an institution with close ties to Hamas, 19 students have enrolled in a one-year postgraduate diploma in Hebrew that will qualify them to teach in government schools.
Somayia al-Nakhala, director of curriculum at the ministry of education, explains why Hamas put Hebrew on the curriculum: “It is better to know what Israel is thinking and saying than to know nothing. We have to know the language of our enemy – or our neighbour.”
She points out that people in Gaza consume Israeli products, are prescribed Israeli drugs and often watch Israeli television via satellite or access Israeli websites. “We are connected to Israel,” she said. “Politics is different from practicalities.”
Until 20 years ago, thousands of Gazans worked as labourers or factory workers in Israel, picking up Hebrew as part of their daily existence. Palestinian doctors worked in Israeli hospitals; Gazan businessmen liaised with their Israeli counterparts on import and export deals; some learned the language during spells in Israeli prisons.