36,000 Students Return to School in Occupied Lands

About 36,000 Palestinian high school students today returned to classes for the first time in four months and clashes with Israeli soldiers in several West Bank towns were reported.

The army has been opening grade schools and junior high schools in the occupied lands over the last two weeks, citing a recent reduction in violence.

In the West Bank city of Hebron, students burned tires and threw stones at soldiers outside the Hussein School, an Arab reporter said. He said the soldiers opened fire and one student was grazed by a bullet.

Several students and teachers in Ramallah, also in the West Bank, said there were clashes with troops there and in nearby Tulkarm.

Won’t End Demonstrations

The reopening of school will not end demonstrations against Israeli rule that have persisted for six months, the students and teachers said.

“It’s good to be back in school because without being educated we can’t be liberated,” said Ranna Bahu, a 17-year-old senior at Friends Girls School. “We can continue demonstrating after we take our classes.”

Israeli authorities have warned that they will close the schools if renewed rioting erupts. West Bank universities, traditionally centers of anti-Israel activism, remain closed.

Meanwhile today, police accused five Arabs of starting a fire that destroyed several hundred acres of trees in northern Israel.

Police spokeswoman Edna Zigelshifer would not identify the five arrested for the fire on Sunday. She said only that they were young men from villages about 80 miles north of Jerusalem.

Suspected of Starting Fires

David Angel, a spokesman for an agency that manages most of Israel’s forest land, said Arabs were suspected of starting a series of brush and forest fires that have destroyed 17,500 acres of woods and pastures in the last five weeks.

He said most of the fires appeared to be the work of Palestinians acting in connection with the Arab uprising.

Angel said he based his claim on the location of most of the fires, many of which had been in fields bordering the West Bank.

Last year, only 8,750 acres burned in Israel between May and October, while this year’s figure is already double, he said.