Palestinian security prisoners' matriculation exams halted

The Israel Prisons Service (IPS) announced on Tuesday that it would discontinue administering the Palestinian matriculation exams to security prisoners due to misconduct on the behalf of exam supervisors provided by the Palestinian Authority.

The IPS revealed Monday that exam supervisors, granted special entry into the prisons specifically to administer the exam, allowed dozens of prisoners to take the exams under other prisoners' names, some of which had already been released. The IPS said that the supervisors had also been caught smuggling letters and pictures from the prisoners' families into the jails.

Some 4000 prisoners were supposed to take the exams, which began a week ago and were scheduled to be completed this week.

"The Palestinian matriculation exams have become a joke, and we won't be a part of that," the IPS central district chief said. "In recent years, as part of a gesture of goodwill, we decided to allow security prisoners to take the exams. Unfortunately, it has emerged that the prisoners, as well as the supervisors, have abused the opportunity they were given," he added.

In one incident, the exam supervisors brought into the jail a number of exam booklets which exceeded the number of prisoners. When the IPS asked to examine the completed booklets, they found that many of them had been signed with the names of prisoners who had not taken the exam, some of which were not even in the prison. In another incident at a separate facility the IPS discovered that some of the prisoners were taking the exam in the name of prisoners who had been released.

The IPS said that it is apparently easier for the prisoners inside the jails to achieve a matriculation certificate, than it is for Palestinians outside the prison. Therefore, the prisoners try to gain certificates for prisoners who have been released.

The exams themselves have also caused some controversy. The IPS has so far barred the prisoners from taking the matriculation exam in chemistry, fearing that the prisoners would utilize their knowledge in the subject to harm prison guards or rival inmates. However, it has emerged that the chemistry exams had made their way into the prisons despite the ban under the title "sciences exam."

In another incident, the IPS has declared it would not allow prisoners to take the exams because one of the questions had been "describe the character of the racist Zionist policy against the Palestinians."

The IPS has yet to gather accurate data on the number of falsified exams, but they have said that the affair encompasses dozens of such cases. As the problems emerged at the separate prisons, each facility individually halted the administering of the exams and revoked the exam supervisors' entry passes. According to the IPS, halting the exams did not prevent the problems and thus the entire project was pulled.

On Monday, the IPS sent a letter to the Palestinian Authority, the Red Cross and the bodies charged with coordinating the administering of the exams in Israeli jails, announcing the decision to halt the project. The IPS conditioned the renewal of the projects on the issuance of specific conduct guidelines on behalf of these bodies.