Israel Reopens Many Schools in Occupied Areas

The Israeli army today reopened hundreds of elementary schools in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip after keeping them shut for nearly four months because of the Arab uprising.

Military officials said the move was in response to a marked decline in violent incidents in the disputed territories in the last few weeks.

On Sunday, however, three Palestinians died in one of the worst days of violence in the occupied territories this month.

“If (the children) are in school, then they won’t be in the streets, but that is not what motivated us to open the schools,” Brig. Gen. Shaike Erez, head of the army’s Civil Administration that runs daily affairs in the West Bank, told army radio today.

Some Teachers Removed

“The whole education system was examined. Teachers who were connected with the rioting are not teachers today,” he said.

The Israeli army shut nearly 1,200 schools in Gaza and the West Bank on Feb. 2, at the height of unrest, keeping about 475,000 Palestinian children and teen-agers away from their classrooms.

In the West Bank today, elementary school girls in gray-striped uniforms and boys in street clothes could be seen trudging the roads to schools.

The army said high schools in the territories will open next week if the relative calm persists.

Israel television reported that some classes would resume today at Gaza’s Islamic University, a key site of protests when the Arab uprising began Dec. 8. More than 190 Arabs have been killed since the uprising started. An Israeli soldier and an Israeli settler also were killed.

High Court Hears Appeal

The Supreme Court, meanwhile, heard an appeal today by Mubarak Awad, an Arab-American advocate of civil disobedience, who asked the panel to scrap a deportation order against him. The court said it will rule at a later date.

The government jailed Awad earlier this month and said he would be expelled for playing a leading role in the Arab uprising.

Also today, Israel radio reported that the government charged two Jewish editors of the newspaper Derech Hanitzotz with being members of a terrorist organization and having contacts with foreign agents.

Roni Ben Efrat and Michal Shwartz were jailed pending trial.