4/2016 Dear Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear Friends of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung! We would like to invite you to take a glance at the new edition of the quarterly magazine Seyasat. Issued together with our partner organization, the Institute for Public Policies(IPP), the new edition offers an insight into debates recently held in and between Palestinian civil society and Palestinian politicians. The beginning of the year was marked by another shake-up of the Palestinian edu­cational system. On February 10th, 2016, teachers started not only to address the current politics of the Ministry of Education in public, but also to speak out against the leadership of their own trade union. According to Abdul Ghani Salameh, author of this issue’s article on the topic“Teachers’ strike, the whole story”, the uprise was not surprising due to the miserable conditions teachers work in: since Palestinian politics do not promote the potential of schools for society, pressing needs are not met, and budgets are allocated inadequately. Along with this goes the“government’s double standards approach” towards pu­blic civil servants, resulting in a huge gap between the very low salaries of employ­ees in the educational sector and other pu­blic servants in ministries or government institutions. The final catalyst of the protest was the remarkable boost of salaries for veterans and engineers, whereas the teacher’s uni­on only attained a salary increase of 1.5%. For some teachers, this is not more than 20 NIS a month. Hence they did not accept the agreement and demanded a basic salary of at least 3000 NIS and a stable retirement plan, among others, as a sign of justice and di­gnity. Disregarding the appointed union leader­ship, which did little to support the tea­chers’ demands and hastily agreed on the government’s positions, the teachers’ called for a democratically elected union leadership. Their claims were accompanied by pro­tests and general strikes by thousands of teachers and supportive community mem­bers in Ramallah that could not be stopped by the PA, who made a remarkable effort to keep teachers away. The strike was resolved in mid-March with a raise in the teachers’ salaries, however, experts doubt that a real change in the Palestinian educational policies will take place. At the same time, the teachers’ strike is only one, although one of the largest, pu­blic uprisings against the Palestinian Au­thority, which enjoys less and less support by the population. The strike should there­fore be seen in the context of a general dissatisfaction with the work of the Pale­stinian Authority. Huda Awad, author of the article“Challen­ges to Palestinian education”, focuses on concerns of quality and accessibility of the education sector: in order to be ready for the job market, but also to be responsible citizens, students need to be introduced to critical thinking, logic, philosophy, re­search methods and questions regarding freedom and rights, equality and social. The author claims that this does not suf­ficiently take place in Palestinian schools and universities. At the same time, the lack of funding for institutions of higher education imposes heavy burdens on students and their fami­lies who can hardly bear the tuition fees. Design: ery foto Seite 1