分类： politics

Israel has set its sights on scaling up exports of its advanced layered air defence systems, with the United Arab Emirates emerging as its next key target following a landmark $3.5 billion agreement with Athens, two unnamed U.S. officials with direct knowledge of ongoing negotiations told Middle East Eye in an exclusive report.

Tripartite talks involving Israel, the UAE and the U.S. are currently centered on closing a critical gap in the Emirates’ multi-tiered defence capabilities, according to the serving U.S. official. The recently finalized Greek deal is being framed by Israeli defence officials as a blueprint for future international exports of the country’s cutting-edge defence technology and design frameworks.

Calling the burgeoning air defence export sector a “profit machine” for Tel Aviv, the former U.S. official noted that Israeli systems hold a distinct competitive edge over U.S.-manufactured alternatives: they are not only more affordable, but also far easier to export to third-party countries.

The UAE stands out as the most viable candidate for the next major sale due to deepening existing defence cooperation between Abu Dhabi and Tel Aviv. Earlier this year, amid heightened tensions between Israel and Iran, the U.S. confirmed that Israel deployed Iron Dome missile defence batteries and accompanying technical personnel to the Emirates to bolster regional security. Additional reporting has confirmed Israel also supplied the UAE with a specialized drone detection platform, and the two countries signed a formal agreement in May to jointly develop and procure new weapons systems.

Currently, the UAE operates U.S.-built Patriot and Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) air defence systems, and acquired Israel’s Barak air defence system back in 2022. Even with these platforms in place, the country still lacks a fully integrated layered air defence network that can counter a full spectrum of modern threats, the serving U.S. official explained.

These ongoing talks highlight Israel’s broader strategy to weave its defence technology into a growing network of regional and global strategic partners. At present, the alliance stretches from Greece and the Republic of Cyprus in the eastern Mediterranean to the UAE and India in the Persian Gulf and South Asia respectively. This emerging network comes as a new bloc, led by Saudi Arabia and including Turkey and Pakistan, recently announced the Mecca Pact, a mutual defence agreement widely viewed as a potential counterweight to Israel’s expanding partnerships. While Riyadh has framed the pact as an effort to deepen collective defence cooperation, it has yet to announce major arms or infrastructure deals under the agreement, and neither Ankara nor Islamabad has publicly confirmed their commitment to supporting Saudi Arabia against Houthi attacks from Yemen.

Unlike simpler single-function defence systems, layered air defence networks are highly complex, integrating multiple interconnected components including command and control infrastructure, advanced sensors, radar systems, interceptor missiles, and launch platforms. The system sold to Greece is even more sophisticated, engineered to counter everything from long-range ballistic missiles to cruise missiles, manned aircraft, and hostile unmanned aerial vehicles.

Under the agreement with Athens, Israel will provide both design expertise and core components for Greece’s nationwide integrated air defence initiative, dubbed the Achilles Shield. This marks the first time Israel has exported a complete, multi-domain defence array capable of countering such a broad range of threats, according to a statement from Israel’s defence ministry.

Greece’s purchase includes Israel’s David’s Sling and SPYDER systems, manufactured by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, as well as the Barak MX system developed by Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI). The deal also includes IAI subsidiary ELTA Systems’ MMR multi-mission radars designed for persistent air surveillance. Greece will become only the second operator of David’s Sling, following Finland — a NATO member that shares a border with Russia. Meanwhile, Greek media reports confirm the Republic of Cyprus completed its purchase and took delivery of Israel’s Barak defence system in December 2024.

One of the most high-profile figures of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement, Joshua Wong, has entered a guilty plea to a charge of collusion with foreign forces — an offense that can carry a maximum penalty of life imprisonment under China’s widely debated National Security Law (NSL) for Hong Kong.

The 29-year-old activist, who became the global face of organized political dissent in the semi-autonomous region, is already in custody serving a four-year-and-eight-month sentence for a separate subversion conviction, another violation of the NSL, handed down in late 2024. That existing sentence was originally set to conclude in early 2026.

Wong first rose to international prominence as a leading organizer of the 2014 Umbrella Movement, and later stood at the forefront of the large-scale 2019 pro-democracy protests that swept across Hong Kong. According to court documents reviewed by Reuters, the latest collusion charge accuses Wong of conspiring with fellow pro-democracy campaigners — including exiled activist Nathan Law — to lobby foreign governments and international entities outside China to impose sanctions or economic blockades against Beijing and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government.

Court documents indicate the alleged activities occurred between July and late November 2020, the same year Beijing enacted the NSL following the 2019 unrest. The legislation has remained deeply controversial since its introduction: critics of the law argue it has eliminated political pluralism, crushed all forms of dissent, and created a pervasive climate of fear in Hong Kong, effectively eroding the city’s long-promised autonomy under the “one country, two systems” framework. For their part, Beijing and Hong Kong’s governing authorities maintain the NSL is an essential tool to restore public stability, safeguard national sovereignty, and reject claims that it has undermined the city’s independent governance.

On Tuesday, approximately 40 of Wong’s supporters — including fellow activists and close personal friends — gathered outside the courtroom to show their backing. Some called out words of encouragement, shouting “Hang in there, Joshua!” to the defendant. Photographs and witness accounts show Wong, wearing a dark blue shirt, smiled and nodded from the defendant’s dock in response to the show of support.

Tsang Kin-shing, a former leader of the now-disbanded League of Social Democrats, a pro-democracy political group, called on the court to issue a lenient sentence, pointing out that Wong has already spent more than 2,000 days behind bars across multiple prison terms related to his political activity. Another fellow activist, Louis Lee, expressed disappointment that Wong was hit with a second NSL charge while already serving time for a separate political offense, saying the news had left Wong and his supporters deeply disheartened.

Despite his imprisonment, Lee added that Wong has continued to pursue new personal activities behind bars, including learning to play the guitar and maintaining a regular fitness routine. “I hope everyone can learn from his resilience,” Lee said.

HONG KONG – Twenty-nine-year-old Joshua Wong, one of the most high-profile faces of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement, has entered a guilty plea to a charge of conspiracy to collude with foreign forces to undermine national security. The charge is laid out under the 2020 national security law enacted by Beijing, legislation that has effectively crushed the once vibrant pro-democracy movement in the semi-autonomous city.

This marks the second time Wong, a former student protest leader, has been prosecuted under the sweeping national security legislation. The law was introduced in 2020 in the aftermath of large-scale anti-government protests that roiled Hong Kong in 2019. Under the statute, the collusion charge carries a base sentence of three to 10 years in prison, and can be punished by up to life imprisonment for cases deemed of a grave nature. Wong is scheduled to receive his sentencing at a later date, with a life term the maximum possible penalty.

Wong is already currently serving a combined prison sentence of four years and eight months stemming from a separate 2020 national security case tied to an unofficial pro-democracy primary election held ahead of planned legislative council elections. Legal norms in Hong Kong mean that his guilty plea in this latest case will likely result in a reduced sentencing discount. Prior to his June 2025 arrest on the collusion charge, Wong had been projected to be released from his current sentence in January 2026.

The charge against Wong centers on allegations that between July 1 and November 23, 2020, he conspired with exiled fellow activist Nathan Law and other unnamed parties to lobby foreign governments, international institutions, and foreign non-state actors to impose sanctions, trade blockades, or other hostile actions against both the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and mainland China. Law, who co-founded the pro-democracy political party Demosisto with Wong in 2016, fled Hong Kong for the United Kingdom shortly after the national security law came into force, and Hong Kong authorities have issued a 1 million Hong Kong dollar (approximately $127,600) bounty for information leading to his arrest.

Wong first rose to public prominence back in 2012, when as a teenage high school student he led widespread public protests against the introduction of mandatory pro-Beijing national education curricula in Hong Kong’s public schools. He gained global notoriety four years later as a core student leader of the 2014 Occupy Central (Umbrella Movement) protests, which called for greater democratic accountability in Hong Kong’s leadership selection process. In 2016, he co-founded Demosisto, a youth-led pro-democracy party, alongside Law, who that same year became the youngest legislator ever elected to Hong Kong’s Legislative Council before being unseated over his pro-independence remarks.

During the 2019 leaderless anti-government protests that swept Hong Kong, Wong worked to coordinate international outreach to build support for the pro-democracy movement, including advocacy with U.S. policymakers for legislation supporting Hong Kong’s autonomy. Beijing and Hong Kong authorities characterized these actions as “begging for foreign interference” in China’s internal affairs. Following the imposition of the national security law in June 2020, Demosisto announced it was immediately disbanding, with authorities framing the law as a necessary measure to restore stability and root out secessionist and subversive activity in the city.

Wong’s prosecution has sparked divergent reactions across global political and civic circles. Critics of the national security law argue that the case is a clear demonstration of the Hong Kong and Beijing authorities’ unwavering commitment to silencing all high-profile dissenting voices, arguing that the consistent use of the law against opposition figures has created a profound chilling effect on all forms of civic activism in the city. For Beijing, however, Wong is classified as an anti-China figure who openly supports Hong Kong independence, a position that falls far beyond the red line set by Chinese authorities.

Wong is not the only high-profile figure to be jailed under the national security law: dozens of leading pro-democracy activists have been prosecuted since 2020, including former Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai, who is currently serving a prison sentence over national security charges. Dozens of other opposition activists have fled into self-imposed exile in democratic countries including the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia, many of whom now face similar bounties issued by Hong Kong authorities for their arrest.

CAIRO – At first glance, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s three-day visit to Egypt this week appears to be a standard diplomatic trip focused on deepening existing economic and diplomatic bonds between the two nations. But beneath the formal ceremonies and planned talks lies a far more strategic subtext: as Washington’s primary global competitor, China is actively building a broad, enduring partnership with a key U.S. ally in the Middle East, part of a larger push to expand its footprint in the rapidly shifting regional landscape.

Xi’s arrival at Cairo International Airport Tuesday evening carried all the trappings of a high-profile state visit: Chinese and Egyptian national flags lined terminal access roads, and President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi greeted Xi on the tarmac alongside military honor guards during a formal red-carpet welcome. The two heads of state are set to hold in-depth bilateral talks Wednesday, and Xi is scheduled to tour the newly completed Grand Egyptian Museum located near the iconic Giza Pyramid complex during his stay. This trip marks Xi’s first visit to Egypt in 10 years, and his first journey to the broader Middle East region since a 2022 trip to Saudi Arabia. In contrast, el-Sissi has traveled to China multiple times over the past half-decade, and the two leaders marked the 70th anniversary of bilateral diplomatic relations by publishing joint opinion pieces in Egyptian state-owned newspapers Tuesday.

In his contribution, Xi emphasized that Beijing and Cairo must “expand the scope of pragmatic collaboration” centered on shared development. For his part, el-Sissi praised the billions of dollars in Chinese investment already flowing through Egypt, and reaffirmed Cairo’s longstanding stance that Taiwan is an inalienable part of Chinese territory, a core requirement for Beijing as it builds global support for its territorial claims.

From Egypt’s perspective, deepening ties with China offers a valuable opportunity to diversify its strategic partnerships beyond its longstanding alignment with the U.S. In 2023, Egypt received an invitation to join the BRICS bloc, an alliance of major emerging economies consisting of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa that is widely viewed as a counterweight to Western-dominated global governance institutions like the G7. A year after that invitation, Egypt finalized a set of agreements with China to join the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), Xi’s signature global infrastructure project aimed at building connected transportation, energy, and trade networks across Asia, Africa, and Europe.

To date, Chinese firms have invested more than $10 billion in Egyptian projects, including a new commercial and logistics hub east of Cairo and a modern electric freight rail line serving industrial zones in the Nile Delta. Official bilateral trade data puts annual two-way commerce between the two countries at roughly $20 billion, compared to $15.7 billion in annual trade between the U.S. and Egypt as of 2025. Despite growing Chinese engagement, Egypt remains a critical security partner for Washington, whose leaders maintain close personal and diplomatic ties with el-Sissi’s administration.

This state visit is just the latest step in China’s years-long campaign to position itself as a neutral alternative power broker in the Middle East. In 2023, Beijing successfully brokered the resumption of diplomatic relations between Iran, China’s key regional ally and primary oil supplier, and Saudi Arabia, a longstanding U.S. partner. The deal marked a major public demonstration of China’s ambition to compete with the U.S. for influence across the region. However, relations between Riyadh and Tehran have deteriorated in recent months, after Iran launched strikes against Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states as part of its retaliation against the U.S. and Israel following the outbreak of war in February.

Beyond the Iran-Saudi detente, China has sought to frame itself as a neutral mediator for other longstanding regional conflicts. It has consistently supported a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a position widely backed by Arab nations as the foundation for lasting regional stability. Shortly before the 2023 Hamas attack on Israel that sparked the ongoing Gaza war, Xi hosted Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Beijing and formally announced a new strategic partnership between China and the Palestinian Authority.

The current disruption to global energy markets has added new urgency to China’s outreach to Egypt. With oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz heavily disrupted by the ongoing war between the U.S. and Iran, the Egypt-controlled Suez Canal has emerged as a critical alternative route for moving energy exports out of the Persian Gulf. “China has very clear strategic reasons to strengthen ties with the country that controls the only open major energy transit route out of the region right now,” explained Muhammad Zulfikar Rakhmat, a Middle East analyst at the Center of Economic and Law Studies in Jakarta. Rakhmat added that amid Washington’s shifting global priorities that have drawn U.S. attention away from the Middle East, Xi sees Egypt as a strategic hub to project influence across the broader Arab and African continents.

The growing security cooperation between the two nations has already produced tangible milestones. In August, Chinese and Egyptian forces held a multi-day joint air exercise across multiple Egyptian bases, marking the first ever combat exercise pairing China’s J-16 fighter jets with Egypt’s French-built Rafale fighter aircraft.

Xi’s trip to Cairo comes directly after he attended a two-day summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan. The SCO is a 10-nation political and security bloc explicitly positioned as a counterweight to U.S.-led global security architecture, and this year’s summit was attended by the leaders of Russia, India, Pakistan, and Iran.

The visit also follows the Trump administration’s latest round of sweeping “economic onslaught” targeting Iran’s global financial networks. The new sanctions are designed to isolate Tehran from its remaining global economic partners, including China, which purchases more than 80% of Iran’s crude oil exports, most often through indirect trade channels. Beijing has repeatedly stated that all trade between China and Iran adheres to international law.

Writing in a joint research paper published earlier this year, Amr Hamzawy, director of the Carnegie Middle East Program based in Washington, and former program fellow Kathryn Selfe summed up the shift: “China continues to build up its soft power reserves while the United States self-sabotages its own stock” in the region. For Beijing, the contrast is intentional: Xi’s administration has sought to position China as a stable, non-interventionist alternative to the U.S., which has faced decades of costly military entanglement in the Middle East, with the six-month ongoing U.S.-Iran war being only the most recent example.

This report was compiled with contributions from Associated Press correspondents Noha el-Hennawy in Cairo and Huizhong Wu in Bangkok.

The White House made a formal confirmation Monday that the United States Army’s highest-ranking civilian official, Dan Driscoll, has formally stepped down, a departure that comes amid widely reported friction between Driscoll and Secretary of the Army Pete Hegseth over the Trump administration’s handling of the ongoing conflict with Iran.

In an official statement released to the public, White House Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly praised Driscoll’s tenure, framing his work as central to advancing President Donald Trump’s policy agenda of rebuilding American military strength. “Through his collaboration with the Commander-in-Chief and Secretary Hegseth, the U.S. Army today stands as more capable and powerful than at any point in recent history,” Kelly added in her remarks.

But Driscoll’s exit unfolds against a backdrop of growing unease within the Pentagon’s senior ranks over the trajectory and costs of the seven-month-long Iran campaign. The Washington Post reported Monday that the service chiefs of the Army, Navy, and Air Force, alongside four-star combatant commanders leading U.S. military operations across Europe, Asia, and Latin America, have privately cautioned Hegseth that extending large-scale combat operations in Iran will severely erode the United States’ ability to deter and respond to other emerging global security threats.

Military stockpiles of critical weaponry have already been strained to breaking point by the conflict, multiple independent outlets have confirmed. Earlier this month, the Associated Press reported that the Iran war has pushed stockpiles of advanced missile interceptors—particularly Patriot systems, which have been heavily drawn down to defend Ukraine against Russian ballistic missile attacks—into a “beyond critical” shortage. Reuters further corroborated these warnings, reporting that the U.S. has nearly exhausted its reserves of sophisticated long-range surface-to-surface missiles, including ATACMS and the newer Precision Strike Missiles (PrSM).

A veteran of the Iraq War, Driscoll first entered politics with an unsuccessful 2020 run for Congress before joining as an advisor to Trump’s 2024 presidential re-election campaign. He had been widely known as a close political ally of former Army Chief of Staff General Randy George, who was dismissed by Hegseth in a personnel shakeup earlier this year. Though public reports confirm repeated clashes with Hegseth, Driscoll long maintained a protected position in the administration thanks to his longstanding personal ties to Vice President JD Vance; the two attended law school together as classmates.

Vance, a leading figure in the Republican Party’s isolationist wing, has taken a high-profile stance opposing a prolonged U.S. military commitment in Iran. He led U.S. negotiations with Iranian officials in Pakistan-hosted talks held in Islamabad earlier this spring, and in July drew widespread attention for publicly accusing Israel of manipulating American public opinion to prolong the conflict.

In sharp contrast, Hegseth has emerged as one of the most outspoken proponents of continuing the Iran campaign, regularly holding combative press briefings where he has pushed back against critical media coverage of the conflict’s handling.

Intra-administration tensions over Iran policy extend well beyond Driscoll and Hegseth, too. Vance is widely viewed as a potential contender for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination, alongside Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who shares Vance’s skepticism of deepening U.S. engagement in the Middle East. Middle East Eye reported in March that Rubio and Hegseth have been locked in open conflict over the question of deploying additional U.S. ground troops to Iran at Israel’s request: Hegseth has repeatedly backed the proposal, while Rubio has warned it would trap the U.S. in another costly, open-ended Middle Eastern war.

The most immediate consequence of Driscoll’s resignation, analysts note, is that the U.S. Army now enters its seventh month of the Iran conflict without either permanent civilian leadership or a confirmed uniformed chief of staff, creating a leadership vacuum at the top of the service at a moment of unprecedented operational strain.

At a closed-door gathering of the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) in Las Vegas on Monday, U.S. Vice President JD Vance moved to ease growing concerns among the group’s members that the second Trump administration has deprioritized support for Israel, a reassurance that came amid a widening ideological shift within the Republican Party over Washington’s long-standing alliance with the Middle Eastern nation.

According to audio of the speech obtained by Politico, Vance’s remarks earned raucous applause from the crowd of RJC attendees, a cohort that entered the event deeply skeptical of the vice president. That skepticism stems from Vance’s past willingness to openly question the influence of the pro-Israel lobbying community in U.S. domestic politics, as well as his close ties to former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who has emerged as one of the most high-profile critics of Israeli policy within the Republican Party.

The RJC, a group that has long maintained an unwaveringly pro-Israel stance, is currently facing an uphill battle to retain influence within the GOP as criticism of Israel surges, particularly among the party’s younger base. Beyond widespread condemnation of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza — which has been labeled a genocide by the United Nations and dozens of leading Holocaust scholars — many young conservative voters are increasingly questioning why the U.S. allocates billions of dollars in annual foreign aid to a nuclear-armed Middle Eastern state.

In his remarks, Vance acknowledged the growing generational divide in the party’s perspective on the U.S.-Israel relationship. “There is a growing suspicion among, I would call it, under-40s, of the US-Israel relationship,” Vance said in the audio. “I think my view is, what we have to do is articulate why this is in the best interest of the United States of America, and actually get out there and talk about the ways in which it is in the best interest of the United States of America.”

Vance also addressed backlash that followed his controversial appearance on the Joe Rogan podcast last month, where he made comments suggesting actors within the Israeli government were manipulating American public opinion to prolong a simmering conflict with Iran indefinitely. Vance defended his decision to speak on the popular platform, arguing that engaging with influential cross-ideological voices is a core part of building support for administration policy. “I think the best approach is to actually go in there and talk to him and make the argument as best as you can,” he said.

During the convention address, the vice president also strongly condemned antisemitism and the ancient anti-Jewish conspiracy theory of “blood libel” — a term Israeli officials regularly deploy to dismiss serious criticism of Israeli policy, including allegations of genocide in Gaza. Vance added that promoting such bigotry violates core Christian values.

Despite the skepticism heading into the event, RJC CEO Matt Brooks told Politico that the group’s community has a well-honed ability to detect political pandering, and he said attendees left Vance’s speech convinced the vice president’s message was genuine. “The Republican Jewish community has a great ‘bullshit detector,’ to understand when they’re being pandered to… And I don’t believe that anybody will come away from this convention thinking that they were pandered to,” Brooks said.

Vance’s willingness to engage with long-taboo questions about the U.S.-Israel alliance that previous Republican vice presidents and their administrations refused to entertain has sparked widespread speculation about a broader ideological shift within the GOP. Middle East Eye editor-in-chief David Hearst has even openly questioned whether Donald Trump will go down in history as the last overtly pro-Zionist U.S. president, with Vance currently widely viewed as the frontrunner to succeed Trump as the party’s leader in the next election cycle.

This is not the first time Vance has made public comments that have put him at odds with the pro-Israel establishment. Back in June, as he pushed back against Israeli criticism of a new memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Iran, Vance warned that Trump remained the only major world leader sympathetic to Israel, urging Israeli officials to avoid attacking their only powerful global ally.

Vance, who led the U.S. delegation in negotiations with Iranian officials in both Islamabad and Lucerne, framed the MoU as a new chapter in U.S. relations with the Iranian people. Speaking at a White House press briefing about the reported $300 billion reconstruction fund included in the agreement, Vance doubled down on his warning to Israeli leaders. “My message to them would be twofold. Number one: Donald J Trump is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time,” Vance told reporters. “If I was in the cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left in the entire world.”

The U.S.-Iran MoU sparked immediate outrage across Israel, where it was widely viewed as a major diplomatic victory for Tehran. The agreement has since largely collapsed, and on Tuesday, just one day after Vance’s RJC address, the U.S. military launched airstrikes on multiple Iranian sites amid an ongoing standoff over control of the strategic Strait of Hormuz.

A sweeping expansion of Israeli education policy in occupied East Jerusalem is forcing more than 45,000 Palestinian students — roughly 38% of all Palestinian students in the city — to study under the Israeli national curriculum, a sharp, accelerated increase from enrollment numbers in recent years. Starting this week, all new first-grade and seventh-grade classes within East Jerusalem’s Israeli-run state school system will transition to the Israeli curriculum, completing the latest phase of a policy Palestinian officials describe as an unprecedented threat to their national identity.

This rapid expansion marks a major jump from just five years ago, when only 10,347 Palestinian students attended Israeli curriculum schools. That number climbed to 27,041 by the 2025-26 school year, and now crosses the 45,000 threshold as the policy is extended to all new entering cohorts at state-run institutions.

Palestinian students in East Jerusalem currently attend one of four school systems: schools operated by the United Nations, independent private institutions, schools run by the Islamic Waqf endowment, and Israeli municipal schools, where the new curriculum rules are now being widely enforced. The trajectory of education policy in the region has shifted dramatically since Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967: initially, the education system remained aligned with the West Bank, using a Jordanian-designed curriculum, which was replaced by a Palestinian Authority-developed curriculum in the 1990s. Today’s expansion of the Israeli curriculum represents the most significant change to that framework in decades.

Maarouf al-Rifai, spokesperson for the Palestinian Authority’s Jerusalem Governorate, called the decision a dangerous escalation unmatched since the 1967 occupation. He framed the policy as a direct assault on the Palestinian national and cultural identity of Jerusalem residents, noting that the Israeli curriculum systematically marginalizes core elements of Palestinian history and collective narrative. Key topics such as the Nakba, the status of Palestinian political prisoners, and the centrality of Jerusalem to Palestinian identity are erased or sidelined from the curriculum, turning education into a battleground for collective memory, national consciousness, and cultural identity in the contested city.

The curriculum expansion is not an isolated move, but part of a coordinated, systematic campaign targeting Palestinian education across East Jerusalem, Palestinian officials say. Additional restrictions have thrown the start of the new academic year into chaos for Palestinian private schools: Israel has blocked entry permits for roughly 70 West Bank-based teachers who work in East Jerusalem, and 40% of all teachers at the city’s Palestinian private schools — most of them Palestinian Christians — reside in the West Bank. In response, private schools have announced they will delay the 2026-27 academic year indefinitely until entry permits are renewed or reissued for all affected staff.

Omar Rjoob, media director for the Jerusalem Governorate, explained to Middle East Eye that the crackdown on education ties into a broader Israeli strategy to solidify the annexation of East Jerusalem and sever the city from its geographic and cultural Palestinian roots. Long-standing barriers including Israeli military checkpoints and the separation barrier constructed in the early 2000s already cut Jerusalem off from the rest of the West Bank, forcing many Palestinian residents of Jerusalem to seek employment in the Israeli labor market and increasing pressure for expanded Hebrew language education over time.

Recent policy changes have accelerated this shift: in January 2026, Israel’s parliament passed a ban barring the hiring of teachers who hold academic degrees from Palestinian Authority-affiliated universities within the Israeli education system. The rule has had an immediate, severe impact on Arabic-language education in East Jerusalem, where a large share of teaching staff graduated from Palestinian higher education institutions.

Israeli authorities have also targeted United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) schools that serve Palestinian refugees, closing multiple campuses and seizing agency-owned educational complexes in the Shuafat and Kafr Aqab refugee camps. Israeli newspaper Haaretz confirmed that a large purpose-built UNRWA school in central Shuafat has been taken over by the Jerusalem municipality, which plans to repurpose the site to house 14 high school classes, a co-ed primary school, and five special education kindergartens.
“This entire trajectory, with all its components, represents an attempt to re-engineer the educational landscape of occupied Jerusalem to serve the Israeli occupation’s policy goals,” Rjoob told Middle East Eye. He added that the weakening of Palestinian educational institutions, movement restrictions on teachers, and forced curriculum changes collectively threaten the Palestinian identity of young students in the city, transforming education into a tool for annexation, Judaisation, and the erasure of East Jerusalem’s inherent Arab-Palestinian character.

The policy announcement comes as high-profile far-right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir prepares to launch a children’s book celebrating his political “activities and achievements” to be distributed to Israeli educational institutions. Titled *The Minister Who Didn’t Stop*, the book is scheduled to launch Tuesday, the first day of the Israeli school year, at a conference for Ben Gvir’s Jewish Power party.