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Jerusalem Triples Funding for Alternative Summer Camps for Arab Children

[Christian Science Monitor] Ilene R. Prusher - In recent years there has been alarm in the Israeli media over Palestinian summer camps run by Fatah and Hamas, some offering paramilitary training for teenagers. Now, officials in the Jerusalem municipality say they're in a struggle to make municipal-run (read: Israeli) camps more affordable for the children of Arab eastern Jerusalemites. "The Islamic movement is running summer camps with a very clear agenda: to indoctrinate young kids to a very strict religious viewpoint and what we know are very extreme messages, which of course we think is not the right thing," says Yakir Segev, a Jerusalem city council member. "There are community centers which the municipality supports, which have summer camps which are more moderate." To that end, the Jerusalem municipality tripled its budget this summer for city-funded day camps in eastern Jerusalem. "What we are trying to do is to provide parents with an alternative, by offering low-cost programs that will be a counter to the extremists," he says. Up to 8,000 children are now in such programs, a huge boost from previous years.
2009-07-24 06:00:00
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