Supreme Court: No Elementary School in the Arab Bedouin Unrecognized Village of Sawaween in the Naqab

Sawaween in the Naqab

(Beer el-Sabe, Israel) On 14 February 2011, the Israeli Supreme Court rejected a petition submitted by Adalah on behalf of residents of the unrecognized Arab Bedouin village of Sawaween in the Naqab (Negev). The petition, filed by Adalah Attorney Sawsan Zaher, demanded that an elementary school be established for the first time for the 350 elementary school-age children in the village. The court accepted the state's argument that the Ministry of Education (MOE) and the Abu Basma Regional Council had found a “solution” to the problem, which consists of transporting the children to schools located in other towns and villages. While the court noted that the children's parents are dissatisfied with this solution, it also stated that there was no possibility of finding a better one for the time being.

The petition was filed on 8 December 2010 on behalf of 70 parents and school children from Sawaween, after 350 children aged 6-12 did not start school at the beginning of the current school year. Children in Sawaween previously travelled to the government-planned Arab Bedouin town of Shageeb al-Salam (Segev Shalom) to attend school. However, this solution proved inadequate since the education system in Shageeb al-Salam has also had to absorb children students from many other Arab Bedouin villages. As a result the town's schools have grown increasingly overcrowded, and the quality of education has suffered. Given this overcrowding, the Abu Basma Regional Council and MOE decided that children from Sawaween would attend school in the villages Al-Asem and Abu Tulul, which are located 20 km away, very far, particularly in the Naqab desert.

As the petitioners stressed, the decision to transfer the children to the other schools was made without consulting their parents, who oppose it due to the unreasonable distances involved. Moreover, Adalah argued, schools in Al-Asem and Abu Tulul are also seriously overcrowded, with over 1,000 children already enrolled in each and average class sizes of 40. As a result, the parents decided not to send their children to school and launched a protest campaign against the decision. As the campaign gained momentum, it was even discussed in the Knesset, where the various government ministries involved passed the responsibility from one to another.

In the petition, Attorney Zaher emphasized that the state is obliged to provide free education for all school-aged children in Israel under the Compulsory Education Law (1949). Moreover, the right to education is a constitutional right that cannot be conditioned on the official status of the town in which a child lives. The state's has refused to established schools for the children in Swaween due the unrecognized status of the village.

The lack of accessible education only exacerbates the already precarious status of the education system in Arab Bedouin schools in the Naqab. According to a report issued by the Knesset's research center, for example, just 25% of Arab Bedouin students pass the matriculation exam, and only 15% receive high enough grades to be accepted to university.

HCJ 9057/10, Hassan Ala'sam v. Ministry of Education (case dismissed, 14 February 2011)