Shut Down by Israel Since July, Classes Reopen in West Bank : Schools Amid the Uprising: Pawns of Passion, Politics

On the belated first day of school in the convulsed West Bank, two fresh-scrubbed kids, caught in the middle, sat in a sunlit classroom.

“I’m glad to be back. It’s hard to learn at home, and I missed my friends,” said 10-year-old Omar.

“I’d rather be throwing rocks at Jews,” said his classmate, Sam.

Pawns of Palestinian unrest and Israeli determination to control it, the West Bank’s nearly 1,200 schools opened to first- to sixth-graders Thursday, beginning an academic year that is already three months late and may still die aborning.

Passion with scant middle ground squeezes West Bank children and their schools. Reality here is more roadblock than blackboard, less chalk than stones and plastic bullets.

A Sense of Disbelief

“I have a sense of almost disbelief that we are here,” said Khalil Mahshi, principal of the Friends Boys School in Ramallah. “Now we must do all that is humanly possible to keep the schools functioning. To stop the learning process is not conducive to peace--it only builds more hatred.”

About 320,000 children in the West Bank have been out of school more than in it since the Arab uprising, known as the intifada, began nearly one year ago. Closed by Israeli order amid the first wave of protests last December, schools reopened for a few days in February but then closed until May. Reopened again, they operated until late July. The normal September opening of a new year never occurred.

Israeli officials who administer the West Bank say they will reopen all elementary, middle and high schools in stages over the next three weeks. If schools become the focus for anti-Israeli demonstrations, however, they will be shut for the entire year, the administrators warn.

What the Israelis consider justifiable measures to preserve public order, the Palestinians call illegal collective punishment--in effect, holding the educational well-being of children hostage to the behavior of their parents.

“We hope that the time we have lost is part of the price we must pay to achieve peace. Kids shouldn’t be used for political purposes by either side,” said Mahshi, 37.

But at the same time, he added, “it is a dilemma for us: to observe the Israeli regulations, or to observe the community consensus. Ultimately, we must be part of the consensus. I’d rather have the Israelis at our throats than to live outside of our own community.”

The Israelis say the schools should avoid politics and function on normal, full-day schedules. But strikes starting at noon have become frequent on the West Bank, and there is usually an all-day general strike once a week.

Mahshi hopes to run his school from 7:30 till noon six days a week, closing on the strike day.

“The children need more time in class, but it is difficult not to observe what the community wants. When there is a strike, parents don’t want their children out in a ghost town where there is no public transportation,” he said.

About 150 primary students returned to Friends on Thursday, a drop of about 25% since before the intifada. Among the 10% of West Bank schools that are private, the school is one of the oldest and most prestigious in the territories. It is owned by the Friends United Meeting of Richmond, Ind., but is meant to be self-supporting.

Students at the school, and at a nearby sister institution for girls, are the children of the Palestinian upper class in the West Bank.

Nonetheless, “we are on the brink of financial collapse,” Mahshi said.

If all grades eventually return to their classes, he said, this year’s enrollment should be around 300. Last year it was 470. After a year without classes to teach regularly, 10 of 34 faculty members have left.

“Last year, we had about 170 Arab-American children; now we think there are no more than 30 left,” said Peter Kapenga, a history teacher from Evanston, Ill., who is faculty adviser at the school.

He said the English-speaking Arab-American children usually are the sons of Palestinians who had emigrated to the United States and returned, or who had sent their children back to study among their roots.

The school’s English-language junior class had 33 students last year. This year’s senior class is expected to number seven pupils.

In normal times, virtually all of Friends’ graduates go on to college, many of them in the United States.

“It’s particularly distressing now to see the younger children,” Kapenga said. “Reading, writing, arithmetic--they’ve lost the habit and they’re losing their skills, becoming illiterate again.”

Throughout the West Bank on Thursday, teachers grappled to reach children grown too wise too soon in the ways of the world. One fourth-grade teacher found a way, telling her class that the intifada had to mean more than simply throwing stones.

If you went to an international conference to decide the future of Palestine, she asked, would you listen most to an educated man, or to an illiterate one?

She had them then. One bunch of tough kids caught in the middle had come in off the angry streets.