British rule over Palestine between 1920 and 1948 was a vibrant and fateful period in the modern history of the country in all arenas (political, economic, societal, demographic and cultural), one of the most active of which in Palestinian society at the time was education. Many Palestinian educators assumed their role as freedom fighters, agents…

Birzeit University (BZU)--established in 1924 by the Nasir family--was born out of struggle and developed as a microcosm of the Palestinian national movement against the Zionist settler colonial state of Israel. This article explores specific moments of solidarity with BZU and beyond. I map out a genealogy of three modes of solidarity with…

Modern universities have largely been portrayed in the literature as an extension of nation building projects, focusing on the state as primary actor. This article challenges such presuppositions by separating 'nation' and 'state' and with a critical appropriation of diasporic subjectivity and institutions from a comparative historical…

Bethlehem University in Palestine is something of a miracle. It was the first university to be registered in Palestine and the first, and still the only, Catholic/Christian University in the Holy Land. Its mission is to serve the Palestinian people through education, with clear and explicit values that derive from the Catholic Church. It has…

This article examines a school program operated by the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) for Palestinian refugees in Gaza in 1949 and 1950. Drawing on historical records from organizations involved in the broader relief effort, it examines why the school program was set up and how it operated, and considers the lessons it offers for…

For refugee children with disabilities, international agencies provide largely humanitarian assistance, including education. However, the obstacles associated with refugee existence can impede progress in the movement towards educating children with disabilities in inclusive settings. This literature review summarizes the historical progression…

Oslo Accords have stringently underscored that both rivalries, the Palestinians and the Israelis, must abstain from incitement to terror and violence. Their educational systems, consequently, have to refrain from convulsive, fundamentalist, and heinous skirmishes leading to stalled reconciliation. History school textbooks are deemed, from both…

With the adoption of the Right of Education for All (1994), the Palestinian Ministry of Education has indicated the necessity to address the needs of students with disabilities. Although the growth of services has increased to meet the needs of this population, there are still concerns with providing best instructional practices to these students…

This paper presents a historical background of the Palestinian education. It outlines a theoretical basis for the development of Human Rights Regimes. The paper tackles the views of some philosophers like Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau and Kant who laid down the foundations for the development of Human Rights Regimes. The paper illustrates that Human…

This article examines the need rural teachers felt for solitude and the place it took in their emotional world. Solitude was not seen by the teachers as a substitute for social life but, rather, considered as enriching it. Unlike loneliness, solitude was sought after and craved as it represented voluntary self-fulfilment in an environment that was…

Since the concept of nationalism first emerged on the world stage, universities have played a key role in its collective formation and dissemination to the masses. Established under challenging circumstances and subjected to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the wake of the 1967 war, Palestinian institutions of higher…

The recent critical turn toward post-secularism, particularly on behalf of theorists working from the perspective of Christian societies, has highlighted the difficulty of approaching the history of the Middle East through the binary of religion and secularism. This article argues that such terms are of little explanatory value in and of…

This essay analyzes the place of Israel in American Jewish schooling from the beginning of the 20th century until the early years of the 21st century. It utilizes curricula, textbooks, and instructional units, as well as other primary and secondary sources to delineate four distinct periods of Israel education. The subject of Teaching Israel is…

The present paper offers a reflection on school textbooks produced and introduced by the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Gaza Strip from the year 2000 onward. The aim is to examine the debates over these textbooks, by situating them over the backdrop of larger geopolitical dynamics and intra-Palestinian social and political struggles.

This article presents a historical, ethnographic and practice-based study of dance education in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The concepts of dance learning, hegemony and counter-hegemony are analysed in the context of cross-cultural interventions in politically marginalized communities, and the theoretical concept of anti-hegemony is…