Israel’s plan to distribute computers too little, too late for 150,000 Arab schoolkids stuck at home due to COVID-19

Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel has sent a series of letters to Israeli education and communications authorities demanding they provide computers and internet access so that some 150,000 Palestinian Arab schoolchildren stuck at home due to COVID-19 are able to connect to online remote learning systems together with their peers.

The two letters were sent last week to the director generals of Israel’s education and communications ministries.

In the letter sent on 13 October 2020, prepared by Adalah on behalf of the Follow-Up Committee on Arab Education (FUCAE) and parents’ committees, Adalah Attorney Sawsan Zaher clarified that the number of computers Israel’s Education Ministry had promised to provide to Palestinian Arab schoolchildren so that they might connect to remote-learning solutions during this academic year does not meet the needs or compensate for the shortfall in Arab schools.

Tens of thousands of children still remain without computers or access to remote education.

Surveys conducted this past April 2020 by the FUCAE in 50 Arab municipalities around the country indicated that some 75,000 schoolchildren are stuck at home without the basic technological tools necessary for accessing remote-learning programs. This figure does not include another 35 localities that were not included in the survey or Arab communities situated in “mixed” Arab-Jewish cities.

The Palestinian city of Nazareth, for example, located in northern Israel, lacks about 5,000 computers but Israel’s Education Ministry has earmarked only 1,800 computers for the city’s kids.

In addition, another 50,000 Bedouin schoolchildren living in unrecognized villages in the Naqab (Negev) region also lack computers as well as basic infrastructure such as electricity and internet access.

“Between 140,000 and 150,000 Arab students in Israel cannot secure their basic right to education," Adalah Attorney Sawsan Zaher wrote in the letter.

Adalah stressed in its letter that the number of computers distributed to children should be determined by the actual needs on the ground rather than on unbased and unrealistic estimates.

Adalah’s second letter of the same date, sent also on behalf of the Regional Council for the Unrecognized Villages in the Naqab, called on Israel’s education and communications officials to immediately provide internet access in unrecognized Palestinian Bedouin villages in the Naqab – whether via permanent infrastructure, the distribution of mobile routers, or any other technological alternative – in order to ensure that every schoolchild living in these villages is able to access distance learning solutions. Some 26,000 Bedouin schoolchildren are impacted by the lack of internet access in unrecognized villages.

In April 2020, Adalah had submitted a petition to the Israeli Supreme Court demanding that the Israeli Education Ministry immediately connect Bedouin students in the Naqab to the internet, and/or provide them with alternate means to connect to distance-learning systems.

Adalah Attorney Sawsan Zaher commented:

Follow-up Committee on Arab Education (FUCAE) Director Dr. Sharaf Hassan commented:

• CLICK HERE to read the letter about distribution of computers [Hebrew]
• CLICK HERE to read the letter about internet access for distance learning [Hebrew]