Young people who have graduated and before enlisting in the army come to the pre-military preparatory school, they study various subjects, participate in volunteer activities and lead independent lives.
As part of the program and preparation for the army service, a seminar is held on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The purpose of the seminar is to show the various views of the conflict and discuss it.Who are the parties that the participants are supposed to know?
The preparatory courses are subordinate to the Ministry of Education, so it turns out that its effect reduces the way in which the conflict is presented to the trainees. An example of how it works happend to me:
Dew to their visit in Jerusalem, I was asked to guide a tour of the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. The neighborhood in the east Jerusalem, a number of families have already been evicted from their homes and other families are candidates for deportation. These are families of refugees from 1948. Due to the Israeli Absentee Law, The refugees cannot return to the homes they left during the war, but Jews can return,and evict them from their current home.
Three days before the tour date, the seminar organizer informed me that the Ministry of Education does not allow a tour of the neighborhood. They ask me to meet them and go with them to the tomb of Shimon Hatsadik (the Righteous). The tomb is in the center of the neighborhood, but just visiting it does not allow you to learn about the situation in the neighborhood. The visit is significant when you can see the Jewish homes among the Palestinians', learn about two parts of the neighborhood that each have a different story. Meet a resident of the neighborhood who tells about the residents' struggle for the right to stay at home.
In a conversation with the organizer, it became clear to me that on that day they are expected to ascend the Temple Mount, visit the city of David which is in Silwan - another Palestinian neighborhood in East Jerusalem.
It turns out that the students intend to visit Jewish sites in the city and not get to know its Palestinian residents and their problems. If the reason for preventing the tour of the neighborhood was security, it would not make sense to go to the tomb of Shimon the Righteous in the center of the neighborhood, not to climb the Temple Mount and not to reach the City of David which is in the Palestinian Silwan neighborhood.
This is how the Ministry of Education controls the contents of the seminar, and this is how unbalanced preparation for military service in the occupied territories looks.
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