The Palestinian Authority Ministry of Culture and Ministry of Education recently organised an event at an official PA school, honouring terrorist Baha Alyan who killed three Israelis on a bus last year in Jerusalem.
The event was hosted by the Shari’ah School for Boys in Qalqilya, and encouraged students to form chains of readers in memory of the terrorist.
This concept promotes the reading of books about Palestinian culture, and has been adopted a number of times elsewhere in the Palestinian Territories in memory of Alyan. Alyan himself had organised chains of readers in 2014 around Jerusalem.
On 13th October 2015, 22-year-old Alyan together with 23-year-old Palestinian Bilal Ghanem killed Israelis Haviv Haim, Alon Govberg and Richard Lakin and wounded three others on a bus in Jerusalem.
Alyan was shot and killed by an Israeli security guard during the attack and Ghanem, a Hamas terrorist who had previously served time in an Israeli prison, was wounded.
The chain of readers was held for 10th grade students (15-16 year olds) and endorsed by District Governor of Qalqilya, Rafe Rawajbeh.
It was organised by the PA Ministry of Culture, the Qalqilya municipality and the municipal library, and held in cooperation with the Qalqilya District Directorate of Education which is under the PA Ministry of Education.
UN-funded NGOs have organised similar chains of readers in memory of Alyan, including the Palestinian NGO Rural Women’s Development Society, which receives funding from UNDP, UNFPA as well as other international donors.
