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Twelve year-old
Hamaam Ismael sits down leaning against a massive tree that died after
it was uprooted by an Israeli bulldozer to prepare the land for the
footprint of the Apartheid Wall. The young boy wonders about his and his
family’s future.
He shares these
burning questions with some 250 students in his school. Each day they go
home worried about the fate of their school, houses, and village – Beit
Ur. The village is being isolated from neighbouring villages by the
Wall. Hamaam says: “Our daily suffering is great but it becomes worse
every winter. We are forced to walk on foot for half an hour to reach
school. The new road opened by the village council is sandy but at least
allows us to reach our goal: Education”.
The school in Beit
Ur is totally surrounded – by the Apartheid Wall on one side and the
walled-in settler-only Road No. 443 on the other. Further, the
settlement of Beit Horon encroaches on the western part of the school.
The “alien” infrastructure of Zionist colonization creates fear, trauma
and suffering for the villagers and the students.
The students are
regularly chased by settlers or Occupation Forces stationed along the
Wall, the apartheid road or the settlement. The path to school has
become dangerous and the education system in the village is threatened.
Students from a
nearby village called Tira attend the same school. These students suffer
also every morning from the same illegal Apartheid Wall.
Occupation Forces
have forbidden Tira students from crossing the settler by-pass road. If
any of them try, he or she will be arrested. Therefore, the students use
a drainage hole below the Wall to reach school. This hole was built to
prevent rain water from flooding the area and, in winter, crossing under
the Wall becomes a real life threatening operation.
Issa Ali Issa, the
administrative manager of the school, said: “First, the Wall was built
around our school then the Occupation Forces imposed restrictive rules
upon the students. The students are no longer allowed to come to school
or go back home, so they are forced to move in big groups with a teacher
accompanying them.”
The situation
escalates when the Occupation Forces learn that a group of students went
home from school without the company of teachers. “At that point, the
military comes and starts interrogating the teachers and threatening the
administration,” he explains. He adds that “the walkway through the
drainage hole that the students use is not even suitable for animals to
pass. In winter, the water rises up to 30 cm high. That is very
dangerous.”
“The Occupation
Forces once came and destroyed the pole where the Palestinian flag is
raised. Now it is forbidden to hoist the flag. In addition, they closed
all the school gates other than one small opening for the students to
enter.”
Every now and
then, additional “procedures” are taken against the school. Sometimes
the Occupation Forces cut the water supply to the school. Recently, they
narrowed the sand road that buses previously used to bring children to
school. Now no bus can reach the school.
The school
administration has decided to attempt to minimize the threats that the
students and the entire educational system are facing in the area.
Lessons for basic levels (until grade 6) have been moved to a new
building further away from the Wall. High school levels remain in the
old building. This solves part of the problem, at least for the younger
students, and hopefully will help to secure their education.
However, the
villagers are not willing to give in to threats by the Occupation Forces
to close the school and take away the land. The area where the school is
located has been slated for settlement expansion. Thus, the Occupation
has tried its best to persuade the school administration and the
villagers to give up the school and the land around it. Once, they even
offered to buy the land for a large sum of money and another time they
offered to build a new school for the village in an area far away from
the old school.
The school was
built in the early fifties. It has a longer history than the occupation
of the West Bank itself. In 1955, the school even ranked first in an
honorary certificate awarded by the Ministry of Education of the
Hashemite Kingdom for the care that they took in gardening and
beautifying the surroundings of the school. Now the green has become the
grey of the Wall. Visitors to the school will only be able to see the
cement towering over the school and the barren land from which all trees
have been uprooted. |
