The Plight of Palestinian Schools

By Susan Tifft

Since the intifadeh began 19 months ago, 572 Palestinians and 36 Israelis have died. But they are not the only casualties: thousands of young people in the Israeli-occupied West Bank have suffered a kind of intellectual starvation as a result of shutdowns of the area's schools. Israeli authorities, charging that the schools had become hotbeds of political unrest, not only barred some 330,000 elementary and secondary school children and 17,000 university students from attending courses but even outlawed private classes and kindergarten. Says Elham, a West Bank English teacher: "My children do nothing except watch TV or play cards."

This banishment from study, although not the damage it has caused, may be coming to an end. Yielding to pressure from the U.S. and its own citizens, the Israeli government decided earlier this month to reopen a limited number of West Bank schools starting July 22. While the first six elementary school grades and the twelfth grade were scheduled to resume, the middle grades and West Bank colleges and universities will remain closed. The decision does not affect Gaza, where, except for universities and selected elementary and secondary facilities, most schools have continued to operate throughout the uprising.

Israel's olive branch to the Palestinians was tentative: West Bank schools will be allowed to function for a limited 17-week term, ending in late November. If any school becomes a focus for violence during that time, it may be shut down. It is likely that classes will meet in two shifts of only four hours each, which could help to minimize that possibility.

But both sides seem prepared to make the schools a political issue again. HAMAS, an Islamic resistance group, last week called for a general strike in the West Bank that for a time seemed to threaten the reopening of some schools. Still, human-rights advocates were cautiously optimistic that Israel's move would presage a softening of its attitude toward Palestinian education. "We are delighted," says William Lee, a spokesman for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which cares for Palestinian refugees. "Our main problem now is to make up for lost time."

Since most West Bank schools were first closed in February 1988, many Palestinian youngsters have hardly seen the inside of a normal classroom. A generation of six- and seven-year-olds have been growing up illiterate. Some have studied sporadically at "underground" schools set up by Palestinian activists in isolated buildings and mosques. But the risks have been high. "If the Israeli army finds the place, the teacher will be arrested, the children will start to run away -- and the army shoots," says Karemah, a Palestinian mother who refused to send her children to an illegal class near Bethlehem.

As a consequence of the hiatus, there are now three times as many first- graders as usual, from those who should have completed their first year in 1988 to those just starting this year. To help unclog the system, U.N. relief workers have developed a "crash course" for Grades 1 through 6 that crams a full 32-week school year into 20 weeks or less in order to advance as many children as quickly as possible.

Teachers have also paid a steep price during the suspension of classes. Starting in January, Israel placed 8,000 teachers employed by the government (out of a total of 9,300 overall) on half pay. Even when they are at full salary, these men and women make only about $4,000 a year, or approximately one-third the average salary earned by government teachers inside Israel. West Bank professors fare much better. Despite the fact that higher education has been closed down since early 1988, they still receive full paychecks, thanks mostly to oil-rich Arab countries and international organizations that have donated millions of dollars for the purpose.

The worst problem created by the Israeli school shutdown, ironically enough, has been anti-Israeli violence. Without the routine of the schoolroom, many boys and girls have spent the idle months caught up in the intifadeh, | congregating on street corners instead of in classrooms. "My first challenge will be trying to make my students act and behave like students and not like rebels," says Ramadan, a teacher in Hebron, just 20 miles from Jerusalem. To help promote order, the Israeli army has promised to stay clear of school grounds. But few Palestinians trust the military to keep its word; fewer still expect the reopening of West Bank schools to occur without incident. Says a twelfth-grader named Salem: "How can I forget my schoolmates who were shot dead, injured and arrested by the Israeli army?"

Despite the measures taken last week, Israeli officials continue to defend the original decision to shut down the schools in the West Bank. "The schools were closed not because we wanted them closed, but because they became a hotbed for violent activities," says Barukh Binah, spokesman for the Israeli mission to the U.N. "Each time they were opened, there was violence." For the sake of the students, most Palestinians and Israelis hope that will not be the case this time.

With reporting by Jamil Hamad/Jerusalem, with other bureaus