Palestinian Authority security forces set up checkpoints outside Arab cities early Tuesday to block public school teachers from attending a major demonstration in Ramallah, Ma’an reported. Officers at the checkpoints stopped all vehicles traveling to Ramallah for inspection and turned back buses carrying teachers to the PA capital.
A large deployment of security officers surrounded government buildings in Ramallah, where teachers were planning to protest. An estimated 20,000 teachers demonstrated in Ramallah last week, calling for the implementation of a 2013 agreement on teachers’ pay.
PA security checkpoints near the Beit Jala junction near Bethlehem and the town of Dar Salah on the main road to Ramallah turned back vehicles carrying hundreds of teachers headed for the demonstration. Checkpoints were also erected outside Tulkarem in northern Samaria.
“We are not opposing a policy or a regime; all we want is to be able to eat our bread in dignity,” a representative of Bethlehem-area teachers told Ma’an, adding that PA security officers had seized the driving licenses and identity documents of bus drivers and ordered them to turn back. Many teachers who tried to proceed in private vehicles encountered more checkpoints down the road.
In Shechem Arab police officers threatened to revoke licenses of taxi drivers who drove teachers to Ramallah. They also threatened to punish bus companies that took teachers to Ramallah.
“The instructions the Palestinian government has given to its security services are a breach of the basics of Palestinian law,” Khalil Assaf, a member of a politically unaffiliated committee, told Ma’an.
The heads of the Palestinian Teachers’ Union submitted their resignation Monday after a deal they had struck with the Palestinian Authority to end a national strike last week had been widely rejected by teachers. Three years after a long teachers’ strike over unpaid salaries, the Palestinian Authority has yet to make good on its promise to increase teachers’ wages.