Following the taking of attendance and the reading of the opening chapter of the Qur’an, some homeroom classes across the West Bank are devoting time to educate students on the importance of supporting local products. A second lesson comes after lunch and recess, when the students line up to return to classrooms.

The goal is to get kids to support products made in the West Bank, which include Palestinian-made stationary and school supplies, medicines and even school uniforms. The ministry of education sent out letters to teachers detailing the new emphasis along with posters encouraging students to “eat what we plant and wear what we make”.

The school campaign comes amid a growing trend in the West Bank to boycott Israeli products in the wake of the fighting between Israel and Hamas that left more than 2200 Palestinians dead and widespread destruction in the Gaza Strip.

“The letter that we sent to the principals and teachers was not political,” an official in the Palestinian ministry of education told The Media Line. “No Israeli factory manufactures like a Palestinian factory and we want our kids to know that,” he claims.

A source in the Palestinian government told The Media Line that an official decision to boycott Israeli products had never been declared.

The idea to step up the utilisation was presented by the Palestinian Federation of Paper Industries, on behalf of the industrial zone. Attached to it was a poster which read, “Yes to Palestinian products”. The letter was sent during Israel’s 53-day war on the Gaza Strip.

The official said his ministry was asked to help create more awareness of the importance of national products. “They’re also cheaper (than Israeli products),” he said. The official directly responsible for this portfolio said they were not targeting only Israeli products.

“If a student has a choice between a Palestinian product and a Turkish product, we want him to pick the Palestinian one,” he said. 

The New Generation School for boys and girls in the West Bank village of Abu Dis is one school that is following the instructions from the Palestinian ministry of education at the start of the new school year.

“You need to teach things beyond Arabic, math and English. You need to plant in their brains how they need to contribute to the national goals of their communities,” said Terry Boullata, the principal of the private school.

She also told The Media Line that the ideology is about the “popular acceptance of a decision that is coming, logically, reasonably, and at the right moment and time.”

Boullata said the images on television of the death and devastation in the Gaza Strip were upsetting for all Palestinians and rejecting Israeli goods was one way to express their anger.

She said parents told her that children were asking their parents not to buy Israeli dairy products such as those made by the large co-operative Tnuva, but to buy similar Palestinian products by smaller dairies such as Jebrin and Janedi. Boullata said that all Israeli snacks had been removed from the cafeteria.

“I have 400 kids in my school and they are all watching me to see if I bring Israeli products to the school,” she said insisting that by doing this, they are not brain washing children. If a child were to bring an Israeli product to school, he or she would not be punished or sent home, because creating awareness can never be by force, but by a dialogue with the children.”

“The children can discuss this among themselves,” she said. “One will ask another “why are you drinking the Israeli milk? Did you try the Palestinian milk? It’s good.” The children go back to their parents, and say “Dad, my friends are using the Palestinian milk, why don’t we use it?”

The ministry insists that it was not working with any boycott organisation. But officials from the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement are determined to spread their message across society.

“We are working with school-age boys and girls, that’s where we are going to consolidate the boycott. In every house, you have a school-age boy or girl who will be a real watcher of that commitment,” activist Mustafa Barghouti told the Media Line.

Barghouti is the secretary general of the Palestinian National Initiative, a political party.

The Palestinians say they have been advocating the boycott of Israeli products for years now as a way to express non-violent resistance to Israeli policies. Originally. a call to shun products from Jewish communities in areas that Israel occupied in 1967, and which Palestinians say must be part of a future Palestinian state, the campaign has become a rejection of all Israeli-made products.

Israel exports to the West Bank total $4.2bn. Barghouti said consumption of Israeli products in the West Bank was down by 50%. Palestinian economist Jafar Sadaqa said production in local Palestinian factories was up 30 to 50% and eight new factories had been given licences to open.

Sadaqa said it’s not possible to say exactly how much Israel had been affected by the boycott.

“What we know, is yes, this is affecting Israel’s economy. But by how much? That remains to be seen,” he told the Media Line adding that the “real test” is that the boycott continues long after the Gaza war. He said Palestinian factories were hiring more workers which is expected to bring down the unemployment rate.

Azmi Abd al-Rahman, the director-general of Policy and Economic Studies and spokesman for the Palestinian ministry of economy, said that observing the boycott of Israeli goods could create 70,000 to 100,000 new jobs.

Palestinian businessman Jeryes Sharbain, who sells textbooks to Palestinian schools, said that, like many others, he began looking for alternatives to Israeli products during the recent Israeli war on Gaza.

“With our money, we were putting bullets in their guns,” he told The Media Line.

At Abu Rami Stores in Abu Dis, owner Omar Salah was known for carrying Israeli products. But he said that his customers had told him that they did not want to see these products in the store. In all of his years running the supermarket, he said “this is the most real the boycott has ever been”.

He said consumption of Israeli products was down 66% especially when it came to the dairy products. Many of his Israeli-made dairy products expired because they were not purchased and he called the Israeli distribution companies to come and take them.

At the same time, there are still a lot of Israeli products on his shelves. Yet he said, when these ran out, he did not plan to order more.

 

 

 

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