Report #7 - School Daze in Hebron (Director's Cut) Part 2

by Jerry Levin
Hebron, West Bank, Palestine
November 14, 2002

By the middle of the week leading up to the big annual Fall Friday night and all day Saturday settler Sabbath celebration in Hebron, featuring the reading of the portion of the Torah (Gen. 23), which tells the story of Abraham obtaining a piece of land there from a certain Hittite inhabitant, the Army and the Border Police appeared to be tensing up, as well as gearing up, for trouble.

An influx of 10,000 religious and secular ultra nationalist Orthodox Jews, and fellow travelers, from not only Israel but elsewhere was being predicted by their sources. So, from about Wednesday on, Israeli military and police forces began to restrict Palestinian activity, by imposing lengthening curfews and launching more frequent wary guns-at-the-ready patrols into the Old City.

That's how Palestinians are protected by the Military authorities from settler harassment and attacks. Arabs are ordered into their homes and told to stay there.

On Friday, November 2nd, because it was the Muslim holy day, there was, of course, no school. Nevertheless curfew was imposed early and not lifted. So we wondered what the situation would be like at the schools Saturday morning, when they would reopen and the number of settlers and their supporters who would supposedly be flocking into the area was likely to be the most concentrated. At 7:15 AM when CPTers Kristin Anderson, Mary Yoder, and I, and also three members of a visiting Quaker fact finding delegation, approached the four schools we have been most concerned about this school year, we found out in a hurry.

As we walked down the hill from the check point, we could see hundreds of boys and girls in the street bordering the three schools for boys milling about in swirling eddies of excited yet hesitant youthful humanity. A knot of worried yet clearly furious male teachers was congregated helplessly in front of one of the schools.

By now the gates to all three should have been wide open with kids streaming into school yards from every direction. But all three were shut and no one was getting into the two on either side of Marief School for Boys. But at that one, even though no one was being let in, neither did it look as if those already in the school yard were trying to get out. Although from a distance we could see the frazzled Headmaster and some of his equally frazzled staff trying to shoo students huddling inside the gate out through it and into the street, the apprehensive kids weren't budging.

In the meantime that cacophonous crush of youngsters outside the gates was swelling ever more loudly because of arriving school bound youngsters streaming noisily into the area from adjoining streets. Suddenly a couple of Border Police Jeeps, their top lights flashing, roared unswerving from around a corner right down the center of the street, scattering all of us in every direction like scampering rabbits or startled chickens.

When we finally made it to the Marief Boys School gate, we found not only the sputtering Headmaster but also the equally distressed Headmaster of Hebron Basic Boys School. He told us that at about 6:45, as his kids were beginning to show up at his gate, Border Police showed up also and told him that curfew was on and that he should not unlock the gate. He was ordered instead to start sending all children home.

But easier said than done.

The furious Headmaster told us that a few minutes later other policemen in other Jeeps invaded the area, shooting off a couple of rounds of tear gas right into the throng of now venueless students. Not being sure where the next attack would come from, the kids were literally thrashing about uncertainly after each salvo-trapped in the roadway by doubt as to how to get away-much like sail boats caught in "irons."

Those provocative acts, the CPTers could see-now that they were in the thick of the still evolving episode-was exacerbating the children's' fear and uncertainty as to just what they could do, as opposed to what the Israelis were saying they should do: a typical Catch 22 for the young Palestinians and their hapless teachers. The menacing Jeeps stirring up dust as they sped by, their loud speakers blaring terse orders to everyone to go home and stay there, only served to keep pupils still stuck in the Marief school yard cringing behind its wall for safety-afraid to venture out-while kids already on the outside were obliged to scramble up side streets or into doorways for protection from the next tear gas attacks, which seemed almost certain to come.

And they did at about 7:30, when the crush of school kids being frantically urged out of the area by their teachers was encountering a reverse wave of still arriving youngsters-unaware of what had been happening. Suddenly a Jeep careened from around a corner, sped through the scrambling swirls of excitable boys and worried girls clear to the other end of the long block, but then suddenly came to a sliding stop.

Shrieking kids, already scampering to get out of the way, and sensing what was about to happen next, because of years of similar never ending always unsettling experiences, started running even harder to stay clear. Inevitably a tear gas canister was sent flying their way. It clattered onto the street near a group of quickly scattering children: its white sinuous snakelike smoke issuing forth in a steady ominously hissing stream, but which then quickly plumed into a wispy cloud enveloping several youngsters who quickly dashed out of the foggy pall holding their hands to their noses as they ran.

Then two more canisters were fired from the opposite direction. As one plopped out of the sky, its contents already spewing forth-this time like a fleecy sausage-one youngster dashing from upwind snatched up a canister and threw it clear of the kids into whose midst it had fallen