The Jerusalem municipality prepares to launch next week, as the school year begins, a new curriculum called "Ahalan" to teach schoolchildren in Jewish schools in the city spoken Arabic.
The curriculum, put together by the municipality's education administration, came into being in order to shed a positive light, create a connection to the Arabic language and thus connect East to West Jerusalem by giving children the tools to communicate. The curriculum's emphasis is on spoken rather than written Arabic, in contrast to many Arabic-language curricula for Jewish schools.