JERUSALEM — Budget cuts to Christian educational institutions in Israel have put Holy Land Christians in a bind.

So much so that Franciscan Father Abdel Masih Fahim, general director of the Catholic Church’s Office of Christian Schools in Israel, flew to the Vatican June 15 to discuss the financial plight of the Holy Land’s Church-run schools.

Father Fahim’s trip to Rome is part of a stepped-up effort by Holy Land Christians to bring attention to their schools’ financial woes and limit the damage left by ongoing Israeli budget cuts.

On May 27, about 600 Israeli Christians and some of their Muslim and Jewish friends held a demonstration outside of Israel’s Ministry of Education to protest fiscal policies that they say are endangering the future of Christian schools in Israel.

Christians make up about 2% of the population of Israel and the Palestinian territory.

According to Fides News Agency, the Christian schools educate 30,000 students, only half of which are Christian.

Many Christian schools are consistently rated among the top schools in Israel, according to annual educational surveys, but that status is now in jeopardy.

 

Educational Peril

During the peaceful protest held in Jerusalem, Church leaders and educators noted that the government has cut its assistance to Christian schools by a whopping 45% over the past decade. Before the cuts, the government funded up to 75% of teaching hours at private schools. At public schools, all expenses are covered by the government.

These budget cuts, coupled with a 2014 ministry regulation that limits the amount of tuition a school can charge parents, has left all 48 of Israel’s Christian schools — all but nine of them Catholic — in financial trouble.

Although the ministry’s budget cuts and tuition limits have affected all of Israel’s semi-private or official but not public schools, including several Jewish ones, Church officials say the Israeli government continues to provide full financial support to many of the schools in the country’s vast ultra-Orthodox Jewish school network, which also isn’t part of the public-school system.

In January 2014, the ultra-Orthodox Shas party — now part of the coalition government — signed an agreement with the Education Ministry that will allow it to be an independent network within the public-school system, thus enabling it to receive full funding.

The full funding of some religious schools and the cuts to other schools, namely Catholic institutions, has been the cause of controversy.

In an article on its official website, the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem said the “unprecedented” demonstration, which was organized by the Office of Christian Schools in Israel, was a protest against “the discriminatory policy of the Ministry of Education towards our schools.”

Last year, the patriarchate noted, the Education Ministry published new rules “to restrict the capacity of Christian schools to collect fees from parents. The combination of these two factors, added to huge budget restrictions and limits imposed on acceptable fees, is in fact a death sentence regarding these schools.”

What the Church wants, the patriarchate said, is full funding for Christian schools, “on equal footing with other school networks, in order to alleviate the burden weighing heavy on parents’ shoulders and to put an end to the necessity to pay tuition fees.”

Father Fahim, who also heads the Terra Sancta School in Ramleh, where he is a parish priest, told the Register that until a few years ago, government funding accounted for 65% of the schools’ teaching hours’ budget. That number, he said, dropped to 34% this year.

“We have asked the Ministry of Education to deal with our students the way they deal with all Israeli [public-school] students, both Jewish and Arab.”

Father Fahim also complained that the Ministry of Education has until now refused to offer Christian school students the same government-funded enrichment programs offered at public schools. Nor does the ministry offer government-funded, continuing-education courses to the Church-affiliated teachers, he said. 

While a meeting with Gideon Saar, who served as minister of education from 2009 to 2013, “resolved some issues,” Father Fahim said, Shai Piron, the education minister from 2013 until the Israeli election earlier this year, “didn’t even agree to meet with us.”

Six months of negotiations between Catholic-school officials and Michal Cohen, the education ministry’s director general, reaped no significant results either.

“That’s when we decided to hold a strike,” Father Fahim said, referring to the demonstration.

Father Fahim said the Christian schools are unwilling to become state-funded “official” public schools because that would result in a loss of autonomy and identity.

“We would not be able to decide on our programming, and our buildings would be at the disposal of the ministry and municipality during the off hours.”

Father Fahim emphasized that each Christian school belongs to a parish and that the school is infused with that parish’s “spirit.”

“The teachers pass on that spirit. We, as Franciscans, prepare our students to help the poor and to see everyone as equal. If the ministry is in charge, we will lose our mission. Furthermore, we need our school buildings for the community. You cannot separate our schools from their churches or their churches from the schools. We are Christian schools and must remain Christian schools.”

In response, Kamal Atileh, a Ministry of Education spokesman, said the representatives of the Church school system “rejected all of the alternatives offered to them, including the public-school option granting 100% funding. Therefore, they will continue to be funded according to the parameters allowed by law.”

Atileh called the accusations that the schools would lose autonomy by going public “without foundation.”

The spokesman did not say why the Shas school system, an independent network within the public-school system, receives full funding while the Christian schools do not.

Father Fahim said he “hoped” the meeting at the Vatican “would provide some answers.” Asked whether he would ask the Vatican to pressure Israel into fully funding the schools, he said, “I don’t want to talk about pressure. We are simply looking for a solution.”