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House Report No. 42 - September 6, 2003
Every day the children of Jubara must wait for the soldiers to open the gate in the Apartheid Wall, then walk in a line past soldiers armed with machine guns, to go to school.
September 1 is the first day of the new school year in Palestine. Like students all around the world, Palestinian children are excited about their first day back at school. They wake up early and put on their uniforms and backpacks with their new notebooks and pencils. But in the tiny hamlet of Jubara, the teachers and children never know if they will be able to reach their school or not. It all depends if the soldiers will open the gate in the Apartheid Wall and let them go to their school in the neighboring village of Ar Ras.
Jubara is a hamlet of 300 people (about 50 families), too small to be considered a village. It has no school and relies on neighboring villages and the city of Tulkarem for food, schools, and healthcare. 50 elementary school students from 1st - 7th grades attend the school in the nearest village of Ar-Ras. 38 students in grades 8-12 attend secondary school in Kafr Sur and Kafr Zibad.
Since the completion of the Apartheid Wall around Jubara, the entire village is trapped between the Wall and the Green Line (the 1967 border with Israel). There is only one road which passes through Jubarra. The southern entrance is blocked by a heavy steel gate in the Apartheid Wall, which has been permanently closed since the completion of the fence this summer. The northern end of the road which links Jubara to Tulkarem is controlled by a military checkpoint.
Before the closing of the gate, students could walk to school in good weather, or pay 1/2 shekel to take a taxi. If the gate is not opened, the students and teachers will have to walk or take a taxi for several kilometers, then wait in long lines to pass through the checkpoint, which could make them hours late for school. After the checkpoint, they must take a taxi on the dirt road to school, which costs 4 shekels each way. Since almost all of the families in the village are unemployed, they will have to choose between sending their children to school or having food to eat.
Before the school year began, village leadership contacted the Israeli District Command Office (DCO) to arrange for the gate to be opened, but were not given a conclusive answer. The villagers decided to make a demonstration at the gate on the first day of school to demand that the soldiers open the gate for the students every morning and afternoon. They asked for international observers and media to be present for the demonstration.
We arrived at the gate at 7:00 a. m. on Sept. 1, 2003. About 50 students and teachers from Jubarra were already gathered at the top of the hill above the gate, ready to go to school. Several army jeeps and a dozen green-uniformed Israeli soldiers with machine guns were stationed in front of the gate. Soon, a small group of television and newspaper journalists arrived and joined the students and villagers at the gate.
About 7:30 the students, teachers, and headmaster marched forward to the gate. The headmaster approached the soldiers and asked them to open the gate to allow the children to go to school, but the soldiers refused.
We approached the soldiers and asked when the children would be allowed through. “We don’t know,” they told us. “We have orders not to let anyone through.”
“But isn’t the gate supposed to be opened for the children to go to school?”
“Absolutely, the gate will be opened every day from 6:30 a. m. to 8:00 a. m. and from 1:00 to 2:00 p. m.”
“Then why don’t you open the gate now?” we asked.
“Today is a special day.” We asked why again, but the soldier just walked away.
Finally, about 7:45 a. m., the soldiers opened the gate just wide enough for the children to walk through in a single line past the soldiers with their machine guns. First the young boys with their blue uniforms, then the young girls with their blue-and-white striped blouses, finally the older students and teachers, followed by the TV crews and journalists. The children gathered in a circle around the journalists, eager to tell their story on television|
A few minutes later, the soldiers shouted at the journalists to come back inside the gate. We listened to the clanging sound of the metal gate being being slammed shut and watched the soldier lock the heavy chain around the gate. Then the soldier slowly stretched the coils of razor wire in front of the gate, once again imprisoning the people of Jubara in their village. On the fence was a sign reading “Mortal Danger! Anyone who comes near this fence or damages this fence endangers his life” in Hebrew, Arabic, and English.
As we stood looking at the closed metal gate with its electric sensors and coils of razor wire, army jeeps drove along the new security road at frequent intervals. We wondered, will the army keep its promise to open the gate again at 1:00 to allow the children to return home? What will happen tomorrow and all the other days when no international observers and media are present?
Silent Transfer
Jubara is one of 16 communities, totalling 11, 500 residents, which have been completely cut off from the West Bank by the construction of the Apartheid Wall. They are trapped between the Wall and the Green Line, and can only enter and exit their villages at the whim of the soldiers who control the gates and checkpoints. In late August, Jubarra was completely closed for eight days and no one was allowed in or out of the village. People were not able to get milk, eggs, and other food, because there is only one shop in the village, and the shopkeeper could not go to Tulkarem to get food.
There is no hospital or medical clinic in the village. To reach medical care, they must call an ambulance from Tulkarem to come to the checkpoint, and hope that the soldiers will allow the ambulance to enter their village.
The soldiers at Jubara checkpoint have a list of all of the 300 people who live in the village, and no Palestinians are allowed to enter Jubara except for the people living in the village. Friends and relatives cannot come to visit and trucks carrying essential items for the village are not allowed in. The soldiers told us that Palestinians from outside the village need a special “permission” to enter the village, but when we asked the soldiers where they could get the permission, they said they didn’t know.
Jubara is entirely dependent on agriculture (orange, lemon, olive trees, greenhouse vegetables and chicken farms) for its subsistence. Inside the village we saw the empty fields where the orange trees had been uprooted and burned by the soldiers. We saw the empty greenhouse frames which farmers have not been able to plant, and the empty chicken farm which once housed 40, 000 chickens, but now is empty because the owner cannot sell his chickens and cannot buy the food to feed them. We looked at the scarred remains of the olive trees on the hillside which had been burned by the soldiers.
Even the sewage trucks, which empty the cesspools, and the garbage pickup trucks are not allowed regularly into the village.
How long will the people of Jubara be able to stay in their village? Or will their life become so impossible, that one by one, all of its families will leave, to become yet another generation of refugees, carrying out the silent invisible transfer of Palestinians from their land?
Text: Cathy
Photos: Carolyn and Kate
Yes, Yes Education! No, No Occupation!
IWPS House Report No. 40 - August 30, 2003
On September 9th Palestinian schools started their new year. But going to school is more of a hazard to Palestinian children than it is in most parts of the world. This year the building of the Apartheid Wall has added to the problems. This IWPS report includes the cases of three villages in the Salfit region whose children’s right to education is threatened by the Occupation.
Sawiya: soldiers and settlers
Sawiya is a village of 2, 100 people that lies on either side of the settler road from Jerusalem to Nablus (Highway 60). It is isolated from the closest cities Nablus and Ramallah by checkpoints and settlements and faces continuous violence from the Israeli military and settlers who have been expanding their presence on the hilltops on the east side of the highway for the past five years (see also Hares House Report????). Sawiya boys’ school damaged by settlers
Five months ago the Israeli army presented the village with an order for permanent Closed Military Zone between Sawiya and neighbouring Lubban. Residents need military permits to access 3, 000 dunums of their land (1 dunum = 1/4 acre), including all the fields and olive groves on the east side of the road, a strategic stretch of land on both sides of Highway 60 and the junction between the two village. The stated reason is “security”.
But it is not only agricultural land and strategic infrastructure that are affected by the Closed Military Zone. The girls’ school of Lubban and the access road to the boys’ school shared by the two villages in Sawiya are included as well. The teachers and pupils of both schools have been denied permits to access the Closed Military Zone and are at the mercy of the soldiers on duty for being able to exercise their right to education. [1]
Another problem for the pupils of Sawiya are repeated settler attacks on the girls’ and boys’ school. Since the beginning of the Intifada, Eli settlers have organized more than ten nightly raids on the schools, causing major damage and destruction, especially to the girls’ school. [2] During the severest attack last summer, more than 45 settlers entered the school grounds and set fire to classrooms, books, computers, files and furniture. The settlers entered the school through a gate less than 100m away from a house occupied by Israeli soldiers. The soldiers did nothing. In a collective voluntary effort, the village collected money to replace lost property and redecorated the school, only to find the settlers coming back on this July 30th to steal the new computers and do more damage to the buildings.
The repeated destruction and theft indicate that the settlers want the Palestinians to evacuate the schools. It is likely they are interested in the strategic position of the schools. If the settlers succeed in driving the Palestinians out of their schools, they will be able to extend their grip on Sawiya to the west side of Highway 60 and separate it from Luban.
Given the cordial relationship between soldiers and settlers in the area, it is unlikely that the schools have been included in the Closed Military Zone by accident. This makes the Israeli army an active participant in the settlers’ attempts to close Sawiya in from all sides.
The Sawiya village is not giving up its schools or its land. This autumn, it will harvest its olives on the east side of Highway 60 accompanied by IWPS and other international activists. The residents have also started to again repair and refurbish the girls’ school, and. plan to build an additional computer room and library. They are looking for individuals or organizations willing to help them purchase new computers and repair the school’s facilities, in particular the bathrooms. IWPS will facilitate in their application for support. People who are interested in participating in the olive harvest in Sawiya should get in contact with IWPS.
Ras ‘Atiya: “This is my school!”
Around Ras ‘Atiya there is a fence. It is part of the Apartheid Wall being built in Palestine and surrounds the village on three sides. There is razor wire and electric sensors on top of it.
Closed off by the fence is a school where 460 girls and boys receive their primary and secondary education. Sixty come from Ras Tireh and Ad-Daba, two small villages a few hundred meters from Ras ‘Atiya. When school reopens this September, the pupils will have to pass through a gate guarded by the Israeli military to enter and will be relying completely dependent on the goodwill of the soldier to go to school.
To protest this assault on their human rights, pupils, teachers and other villagers organized a demonstration at the gate to the school on August 17. They invited IWPS, the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), and the Israeli peace groups Gush Shalom and Yesh Gavul! to join.
Around 11:00 a. m., the pupils from Ad-Daba and Ras Tireh came down the hill to the military access road that now separates their villages from Ras ‘Atiya. The pupils and teachers from Ras ‘Atiya were waiting for them at the gate with the Israeli and international activists. The two groups met in one large demonstration in the middle of the road, chanting Arabic, Italian, Spanish and English slogans against the Wall, against the occupation and for the right to education. They held banners saying “We Want to Learn”, “Tear Down the Wall”, “No Negotiation with the Wall”, and “Separation Wall = Fear + Starvation”.
Farmers on carts, donkeys and tractors crossed the road from one village to the other. A boy on a horse trotted past the Wall waving a small Palestinian flag.
Between 11:45 and 12:00 two army jeeps arrived. The organizers urged the crowd to move inside the gate. The international and Israeli activists formed a security line around the demonstration and stayed outside to prevent the army from closing the gate. The school boys grabbed the fence and started shaking it, shouting “This is my school; freedom, freedom!” Meanwhile the border police arrived.
Representatives from Ras ‘Atiya and the international activists made speeches to highlight the inhumanity of the Apartheid Wall, while the army and border police argued about the proper steps to take. The army commander waved a paper in the face of the police, but the policemen quietly moved him back to his jeep. Together with the construction company’s private security guards, the police then tried to move the crowd back inside the gate.
The men of the village decided to hold their Friday prayer and brought out their prayer mats. At 12:45 the border police gave the international demonstrators five minutes to move inside the gate, but they decided to hold the line until the men had completed their prayers. The men and boys knelt down on the mats, facing Mecca. The internationals linked arms tightly, while the army approached. A commander took close-up snapshots of all the protesters and the border police moved their jeep almost touching the people’s feet. The men calmly continue their prayers, facing east; away from the Wall, soldiers, police and security guards. At 13:00 the soldiers closed the gate and the demonstrators went back to their homes on both sides of the fence.
On the school wall, just behind the fence, the children have written: “Let me learn in peace,” “Stop killing children” and “Don’t make our village a prison”.
Deir Ballut: A, B, C?
When it comes to incursions and military actions, the Oslo division of the West Bank into areas A (under Palestinian control), B (under administrative Palestinian and military Israeli control) and C (under Israeli control) has lost all meaning to the Israeli army. But when it fits them, this obsolete distinction is suddenly still in effect. A case in point is Deir Ballut. The Oslo Agreement placed only existing Deir Ballut residential areas and 150 dunums of farm land in area A. All the rest was put under Israeli military control.
Nine months ago, the village started to build a new school on what they know as area B land. But when construction reached the second floor, the army told the village that according to their information they were building in area C (which is not ‘allowed’ for Palestinians) and that if they continued building the army would come and occupy or destroy the school.
For several months now, the school has stood empty. It was supposed to be opened this school year, but pupils will have to go to their old schools once more. According to the municipality, USAID - the sponsor of the project - has tried to proceed with the project through legal action, but so far without success. The problem of the school is recognized in the Salfit region as one of the bigger problems and village representatives and other activists have asked IWPS to help them do something about it.
IWPS team members and volunteers have decided to stay overnight in the village once a week and work with the people of Deir Ballut to organize and mobilize Palestinian, Israeli and international activists around the problem of the school. We have also started a regular checkpoint watch in the village, in coordination with the women of the Israeli organization Checkpoint Watch.
