In the West Bank, an Escort for Palestinian Pupils

In the khaki hills of the southern West Bank, the children gathered for their unusual after-school ritual.

Seventeen Palestinian children attending school in this village set out along a dirt track leading 2 1/2 miles to the village where they live, called Tuba. But they were not making the hike alone.

Trailing closely were two Israeli police officers in an armored truck, assigned to make sure that no harm came to the youngsters, ages 6 to 12.

For more than a year, teams of Israeli police officers and soldiers have taken turns escorting the children here past the Jewish settlement of Maon and a nearby outpost, where tensions have flared between settlers and Palestinian villagers.

In the latest incident, a group of youths attacked the children and their army escorts with sticks and rocks and set a dog on the group, according to Palestinian residents and Israeli authorities. One soldier fired shots into the air to scare away the attackers before police arrived. Four children and two soldiers were hurt.

“We were walking and they started throwing rocks at us,” said 11-year-old Yusef Abu Jundiyeh, who said he was struck in the left leg. The boy pulled up his pant leg to reveal a scrape. “It was a hard hit,” he said.

News reports about the assault, which took place May 6 as the children skirted a pine grove next to the hilltop settlement, stirred public outrage and drew new calls to crack down on violence by radical settlers.

“Arab children would not need a military escort had the [army] and police decided, along with the courts, to enforce the law on all residents of the region equally,” said an editorial in the daily newspaper Haaretz.

A group of prominent actors, artists and writers, including writers Amos Oz and David Grossman, sent a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, writing, “A situation in which schoolchildren are exposed to attack from lawbreakers with no proper protection is an intolerable situation.”

The incident came as authorities were preparing to evict hard-line settlers from a house in Hebron and underscores deteriorating relations between the settlement movement and the Israeli government. Last year, Israel removed more than 8,000 settlers from the Gaza Strip and a small portion of the northern West Bank.

Olmert and other officials have used sharp language in warning Jewish extremists against hooliganism, including acts such as chopping down the olive trees of Palestinians. A few months ago, Atty. Gen. Menachem Mazuz offered an unusually blunt public assessment, saying Israeli authorities had failed to enforce the law in the West Bank.

Israeli police said they were investigating the latest episode but had made no arrests. Four days after the incident, two investigators came to Tuwani to take statements from the soldiers and skittish-looking children.

Micky Rosenfeld, a police spokesman, said investigators had not determined whether the assailants were from Maon, the cluster of homes in the adjacent pines, or somewhere else. Settler leaders denounced the violence but said settlers were being maligned by the Israeli media and peace activists who monitor the escort program and keep a regular presence in Tuwani.

“If anyone threw rocks, this is wrong. If it really happened, I want those responsible to be dealt with in all severity of the law. But things are not being described innocently or fairly,” Tzvika Bar-Hai, head of the Southern Mount Hebron Regional Council, told Israel Radio.

Dudi Eldar, a spokesman for the Maon settlement, said Palestinian children had damaged the crops and hurled rocks at workers tending cherry trees. He said his community had asked the army to change the route so the children steered well clear of the settlement.

“If the army is so worried about the Palestinian kids, what makes more sense than diverting their route to school?” Eldar said.

But Palestinian residents of Tuwani and Tuba say they have been subjected to long-standing intimidation by settlers that has included chopping down their olive trees, killing their sheep, and terrorizing the schoolchildren and their escorts.

In September 2004, two American members of Christian Peacemaker Teams, which then accompanied the children, suffered injuries after being attacked by masked assailants wielding chains and clubs. Less than two weeks later, attackers with sticks targeted other group members after they had escorted the children to their homes in Tuba.

After that, Israeli police and soldiers, who are normally viewed with hostility by Palestinians, began serving as bodyguards for the children of Tuba, a community of 50 shepherds and farmers who inhabit remote caves.

On a recent afternoon, the children in Tuwani were led by an Israeli peace activist to the spot from which the two police officers would escort them along the half-mile stretch nearest to the settlement. The girls wore pinstriped tunics and head scarves, the boys dust-caked sweatshirts. On their backs were weather-faded knapsacks, one with the image of Batman.

The blue police truck rumbled behind as the youngsters scuffed along the thistle-lined road, past the spot where the attackers emerged from the pines days earlier. This day, the woods were quiet.

Once the group was safely past the settlement, the officers waved and peeled off. Their young charges continued on, shouting and jostling one another as they scampered into the pale distance toward home.