Lawyers for Justice Group expresses deep concern regarding the punitive measures and escalating violations targeting teachers participating in the ongoing strike, which began on 13 October 2025, following the reduction of salaries to 50% since June 2025. This has placed thousands of teachers under severe financial hardship, compelling them to resort to strike action as a lawful and peaceful means to demand their legitimate financial and professional rights.

1. Background of the Crisis

The protest movement gradually escalated into a full strike after months of incomplete salary disbursement, alongside rising living costs that exceeded the actual income teachers received. As a result, many teachers lost their ability to sustain a decent standard of living and meet basic family commitments. Despite persistent appeals, the authorities have not meaningfully responded to teachers’ demands nor initiated a serious negotiation process. Instead, restrictive measures were adopted in an attempt to pressure teachers into ending the strike without addressing the root causes of the crisis.

2. Documented Violations and Restrictive Practices

Based on data and testimonies collected through the electronic reporting form, Lawyers for Justice Group has monitored a wide range of violations targeting striking teachers—administrative, financial, security-related, and social. The most prominent recorded practices include:

1. Threats of dismissal, suspension from work, or forced retirement without legal justification.
2. Salary deductions despite the irregular payment of wages, coupled with attempts to classify strike days as absenteeism, which may later result in loss of employment.
3. Arbitrary transfers to other schools or directorates as a coercive measure to break the strike.
4. Threats to register teachers in monthly attendance reports as “absent” or under code (ST), creating administrative records that may later be used as grounds for sanctions.
5. Social and familial pressure, particularly against female teachers, including reported cases of threats of divorce and family disputes as a tool to force them back to work.
6. Security summons targeting some teachers due to their participation in the strike, with interrogations focused on roles, organization, and communication, accompanied by pressure in some cases.
7. Replacement of striking teachers with temporary contract teachers until the end of the academic year to weaken the strike and reduce its impact.
8. Psychological and professional harassment including intimidation, verbal threats, verbal warnings, and informal notices of privilege deprivation.
9. Documented cases of direct threats of dismissal, including an incident in which a teacher suffered a breakdown during security interrogation and was hospitalized as a result.

These practices reflect the transformation of administrative authority into a pressure and punitive tool, rather than a regulatory mechanism. Some of these violations rise to the level of serious interference with a constitutionally-protected right to strike, creating an unsafe environment for teachers.

3. On the Legality of the Strike

Lawyers for Justice Group stresses that the teachers’ strike is legal and legitimate, falling under the framework of Decree-Law No. (11) of 2017 regulating the right of public employees to strike, which explicitly permits strike action as a legitimate means of protest and rights-based demands.

Therefore, classifying the strike as “unauthorized absenteeism” constitutes a misapplication of legal reference, and any punitive measures based on such classification are unlawful and subject to annulment.

The teachers’ strike is protected under:

Article (19) of the Palestinian Basic Law, which guarantees freedom of opinion and expression:
“Freedom of opinion is guaranteed. Every person has the right to express their opinion and to publish it in speech, writing, or other means of expression or art, in accordance with the law.”

Decree-Law No. 11 of 2017 regulating the right to strike in the civil service, which stands as the legal reference governing teachers’ strike cases.

Any administrative or security measure aimed at pressuring, threatening, or retaliating against striking teachers constitutes a clear violation of constitutional rights and the law.

4. Recommendations and Demands

Lawyers for Justice Group:

• Calls for an immediate halt to all punitive measures against teachers.
• Affirms that dismissal, salary deduction, or transfer due to strike participation is legally void and challengeable in court.
• Urges the authorities to abandon punitive and security-based approaches and adopt genuine dialogue and negotiation instead.
• Calls for systematic documentation of all violations individually and collectively.
• Invites human rights and labor organizations to intervene to provide legal and community protection for teachers.

Conclusion
Continuing to address the teachers’ crisis through pressure and intimidation will not resolve the situation. Instead, it escalates tensions and undermines the rights of a sector that forms the backbone of the education system.

Strike action is not disruption, but a legitimate outcry for rights—one that deserves respect, not punishment.

Lawyers for Justice Group reaffirms its commitment to monitoring the situation legally and documenting all violations against teachers until their lawful demands are fully met.