were two factors identified as contributing to the resistance,369 and the pressure on Palestinian schools to drop their current curriculum indicates a belief that inhibiting the development of a Palestinian identity and national consciousness in students will lessen their capacity for resistance and the pursuit of social and political change. 370 However, this pressure is exerted not only by the curriculum policy but also by the structure of Israel’s education system. The structure of the Israeli education is such that Palestinian students may have no choice but to actively choose programs that offer the Israeli curriculum in order to have better access to higher education and the job market. Israeli universities do not recognize diplomas granted by the Palestinian education system, making it especially difficult for Palestinian students to gain entry.371 Yet many of them are forced to pursue this option because going to a university in the West Bank could result in their East Jerusalem residency permits being revoked.372 As a result, they are made to choose between a curriculum that gives them some opportunity to connect with their identity and another that denies and invalidates their existence but offers an easier future.373 “I’ve lived all my life in Jerusalem. I received my primary and secondary education in Palestinian public schools in Jerusalem. The curriculum was Palestinian, but I later discovered that they were altered by Israel. For instance, in the original textbook you find a paragraph about something that would make us proud as Palestinians, but Israelis omitted this paragraph. Israelis also play with the choice of words that they use for the Palestinian textbooks. I remember that in the “National Education, 9th Grade” textbook, the words “Nakba” and “Naksa” are not defined with the article ‘the’, as if they were not referring to something specific. They either omitted or altered a lot of texts in the Palestinian textbooks. As I was in a Palestinian public school, I used to think that we studied the same textbooks as in the Palestinian public schools in the West Bank. However, the textbooks that are taught to students in schools run by the Israeli-controlled Jerusalem Municipality are changed. In these schools, teachers are not allowed to teach students about the Palestinian cause. They are forced to teach students whatever the [Israeli-censored] textbooks include; they don’t include information about the Palestinian history of revolutions for example, rather, they include history narrated from an Israeli perspective. History textbooks didn’t cover enough information about the 369 Ibid. 370 The Civil Campaign for Preserving the Palestinian Curriculum in Jerusalem, Palestinian Jerusalemites Oppose the Illegal Imposition of Israeli curriculum in East Jerusalem Schools, op. cit. 371 Palestine Monitor, East Jerusalem youth face dilemma of choosing between Palestinian and Israeli curriculums, 4 November 2013. Available at: http://www.palestinemonitor.org/details. php?id=oeldgha5454ybwnxbiedv 372 Jonathan Cook, How Israel is ‘turning Palestinians into Zionists’, op. cit., 18 February 2016 373 Palestine MonitorEast Jerusalem youth face dilemma of choosing between Palestinian and Israeli curriculums, op. cit., 4 November 2013 99