The Silwan schools strike enters its second day... and the occupation confronts it with arrests and deportations
For the second day in a row, the educational strike continues in the schools of the town of Silwan in Jerusalem, amid an Israeli escalation that directly targeted members of the Central Parents' Committee and residents of the town, in an attempt to silence those opposing the decisions imposed on their schools.
The Wadi Hilweh Information Center in Jerusalem reported that the Central Parents' Committee of Silwan and Ras al-Amoud, in cooperation with the town's notables, mayors, and local institutions, declared a comprehensive, open-ended strike beginning Sunday (September 1, 2025), in protest against decisions it described as "unjust" that affect students' futures and educational rights. The most prominent of these decisions include: transferring the students of the Silwan Secondary School to Al-Shamila School in Silwan, converting the school to a co-educational school teaching the Israeli curriculum, and appointing principals without consulting the parents' committees.
Yesterday evening, the national and Islamic forces in Silwan renewed their full commitment to the strike, affirming that the Central Parents' Committee is the only official and authorized body in the town. They denounced attempts to sabotage the strike, saying in a statement: "Anyone working to sabotage the strike, whether school administrations, parents, or any other party, will be held accountable, and the punishment will be severe. We will strike with an iron fist anyone who dares to tamper with our children's future."
Meanwhile, occupation forces intensified their deployment in front of Silwan Secondary School today and yesterday, coinciding with a sit-in and presence of students and their families outside the school. They reiterated their refusal to transfer 600 students to the Al-Shamila School, which "cannot accommodate this number and does not provide a suitable educational environment." They emphasized that "the Secondary School was built at the families' expense decades ago and has a distinguished administrative and teaching staff."
The students' families expressed their dissatisfaction with the decision to transfer their children so suddenly and without any prior preparation, believing that this step had a severe psychological impact on the students and their families. They emphasized that the new school they were forced to move to lacks the most basic educational and environmental requirements, as it is not equipped to accommodate hundreds of students. They emphasized that their children had found their Secondary School a safe space where they had grown up for many years, and that their sudden uprooting from it threatens their psychological and educational stability and places them under difficulties at the beginning of the school year.
Today, verbal altercations erupted between the forces and residents. Some young men were interrogated on the spot, arrests were made at the scene, and yesterday, the forces threatened to use force to suppress the sit-in if residents and students were not evacuated from the area.
In an attempt to quell the popular movement, Israeli police carried out a campaign of arrests targeting the committee's most prominent activists. Yesterday, they arrested Ramadan Taha, the spokesperson for the Parents' Committee, and Islam al-A’war. They were released under conditions that included banning them from Jerusalem schools, banning them from participating in any sit-ins for a month, and preventing Taha from communicating with school principals and teachers.
Today, police arrested two other young men from the town, Haitham Abbasi and Anas Abbasi, from al-Madares Street in the Ras al-Amoud neighborhood of Silwan, after detaining them at the scene.
