At least 5,200 Arab children not included in any educational system live in the Negev area – the Arab dominated region located in southern Israel.

Local Arab authorities highlighted the issue last year stating that 40 per cent of Negev Arab children have not been enrolled in any educational system. MEMO revealed that parents often opted not to enrol their children in schools due to their difficult living conditions and the difficulty in accessing schools located in distant towns.

Dr. Awad Abu Frih, an activist and defender of the rights of Negev’s Bedouins, told Arab48 that Israel’s “race-based discrimination policy” is not new or an exception, but a “systematic” policy exercised against Negev’s Arabs to push them to leave their homeland.

The phenomenon has persisted for years, with the education ministry claiming that it cannot build schools in… https://t.co/PszvCJoRPd

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“The education and interior ministries use our children politically … to pressure families into leaving their towns and to evacuate them from their villages and have them join the so-called civil cities, with the aim of taking control over the land and the place”, stated MEMO.

This problem has persisted for years, with the education ministry claiming that it cannot build schools in areas with an unclear status, adding that this task is the responsibility of the interior ministry’s Bedouin Development Authority.

(MEMO, PC)