Nablus, the occupied West Bank – For decades, the Zenabia Elementary School has been offering an intimate learning environment to aspiring young students from across the educational spectrum in the northern West Bank city of Nablus.But now, due to Israel’s years-long withholding of tax revenues owed to the Palestinian Authority, the Palestinian school system is effectively broke. Like administrators at all government-run schools in the West Bank, the Zenabia school principal, Aisha al-Khatib, is struggling to keep her small, public school in session.For most of the week, the Zenabia school is shuttered, and children roam the streets or stay at home. School supplies are woefully missing, with even regular schoolbooks now reduced to “bundles of pages”.“We do everything we can, but we do not have the time or the materials or the consistency to properly teach our children and keep them off the streets,” says al-Khatib. “And this is everywhere in the West Bank.”Targeting the education of Palestine’s children, she says, “means destroying the nation”.Under the direction of far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, Israel has systematically been withholding billions of dollars in tax revenues over the past two years that Israel collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority (PA). The measure is partly intended to punish the PA for its longstanding policy of paying families of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel for resisting the occupat …
