Israel Orders Closure of All 1,200 West Bank Schools as Protests Persist

Israel on Friday ordered the closure of all 1,200 schools in the occupied West Bank next week in an attempt to curb Palestinian student protests.

The Israeli army, meanwhile, kept more than 80,000 West Bank residents under curfew and ringed mosques in Gaza City to prevent demonstrations by worshipers at Friday Muslim prayers.

Palestinian sources said the Israeli Civil Administration for the West Bank decreed that final examinations would start today and all schools would close next Thursday in a move to stop demonstrations and clashes between troops and pupils.

Israel reopened the schools only in June, after closures of up to five months, and extended the term until mid-August to allow the 300,000 students more time to study for examinations.

But security and Palestinian sources said authorities decided to end schooling for the academic year next week because of the persistent student unrest against Israeli rule.

A Civil Administration spokesman, however, said authorities were merely ending the academic year early. He said the move was “a technical decision” unrelated to the seven-month-old Arab uprising which has drawn much of its support from teen-agers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. More than 210 Palestinians and four Israelis have died in the troubles.

In the Gaza Strip, troops were on alert for possible clashes with worshipers after Friday prayers, but the day passed peacefully at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s walled Old City, witnesses said.

Soldiers confined residents to their homes in most of the West Bank city of Nablus, the town of Qalqiliya and the villages of Beit Sahur, Anabta and Yabrud, an army spokesman said.

Nablus was put under curfew late Wednesday after the deaths of two teen-agers shot by troops. Jewish settlers raided Qalqiliya the same night after a Jewish boy was injured in a stone-throwing incident.

In West Jerusalem, police shot and killed an Israeli army reservist early today after he opened fire from a rooftop in the southwestern outskirts of Jerusalem and slightly wounded a passer-by.

The reservist, identified as Motti Aharon, 34, began firing an M-16 Friday evening. Police and Israel Radio said he was shot about five hours later as he came down from the roof and opened fire on members of an anti-terrorist squad who had entered the building.

Police said the man had recently finished his annual reserve duty and had his gun and at least two full magazines of ammunition at home.