Palestine: Fatah and Hamas take their fight into schools · Global Voices
Ayesha Saldanha

August 24 should have seen the start of classes for pupils in Gaza’s government schools, but instead it was the beginning of a week-long strike called by the Fatah-led teachers’ union protesting the interference of Hamas in education. In this post, one blogger, a school pupil himself, gives us his perspective on the political fight getting in the way of his education.
In the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, the Palestine Teachers’ Union is one of the few remaining strongholds of Fatah, and is supported by Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian Authority (PA) in Ramallah. It called a strike during the first week of the school year to protest the transfer of dozens of teachers, transfers which it claimed were made so that Hamas could install its supporters in key positions. Teachers were stuck in the middle of the conflict between Hamas, which controls the administration of Gaza, and the PA in Ramallah, which pays their salaries. They were threatened with having their salaries cut or being fired if they broke the strike, or if they accepted a promotion (indicating loyalty to Hamas); yet if they did strike then they risked being sacked by Hamas. While Hamas denied they were replacing staff, as soon as the strike started it brought in hundreds of new teachers; Hamas’ Education Minister estimated that 2,000 of the 9,000 government school teachers had been replaced.
Mutasharrid (‘homeless person’ or ‘vagrant’) is a pupil in Khan Yunis, in the south of the Gaza Strip, and explains what happened during the first week of the school year:
Status: No communication.
Where do we come in all of this?!
At the time of writing some teachers are still on strike.