Hamas is taking control of Palestinian schools

POSTED: 4:10 p.m. EDT, June 11, 2007

Hamas will control Palestinian Education Ministry for three more years
Hamas has begun taking control of schools and making changes
Some Palestinians say Hamas' goal is to shape political views of students
Hamas leaders insist they are not trying to indoctrinate children

KUFR NAMEH, West Bank (AP) Palestinian children spend more of their school day studying Islam. Critical jobs in public education are filled by Islamic stalwarts. A once-banned social studies reader, crammed with hard-line rhetoric, is now in classrooms.

During a year in power, the Islamic Hamas movement has begun taking control of Palestinian schools and is making changes.

Hamas leaders insist they are not trying to indoctrinate children. But moderate Palestinians say Hamas' goal is nothing less than shaping the political views of future generations.

It's a battle for the Palestinian soul, part of a wider Hamas campaign to expand its influence in all spheres of public life, also including newspapers to unions, said Hanan Ashrawi, a secular former minister of higher education.

"You are seeing the gradual transformation of a largely secular national ... education system and curriculum into a more ideological, closed system," said Ashrawi.

Hamas shares power with the moderate Fatah movement it defeated in last year's election, and the terms of that coalition will keep it in control of the Education Ministry for three more years.

Hamas doesn't have completely free rein in the schools. It's being scrutinized by Fatah and by the largely secular Palestinian intelligentsia. Ashrawi, now an independent legislator, says she has asked Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, a moderate who heads Fatah, to hand control of the curriculum to an independent commission of experts, but has gotten no commitment.

"We are not making education more Islamic," Education Minister Nasser Shaer said before he was arrested by Israel in an anti-Hamas sweep last month. But he is also under pressure within his movement to apply a clearly Islamic, non-Western curriculum. For example: Hamas firebrands want to eliminate U.S. history from a textbook.

So far, Shaer has made only a few changes. He has increased religion classes from three to four a week and allowed a social studies reader with a strong Islamic bent to be used in the classroom.

He has focused mostly on moving Hamas loyalists into key positions in the education system, presumably preparing the ground for tighter control in the future.

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