[News] Israel seizes mobile classrooms in Palestinian village the day before school

[Anti-Imperialist News]

  Israel seizes mobile classrooms in Palestinian village the day before
  school

Aug. 23, 2017 - http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=778812
BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) -- Days after residents in an isolated Bethlehem-area 
village received stop-work orders for mobile homes being set up as a 
school -- structures for which locals insisted they had obtained the 
necessary permits -- Israeli forces reportedly raided the village 
Tuesday and seized the classrooms.

The raid into Jubbet al-Dib came a day before the first day of the 
school year, leaving some 64 students from the 1st to 4th grade without 
a school to attend on Wednesday, Palestinian Authority-owned Wafa news 
agency reported.

Wafa quoted local activist Hasan Breijieh as saying that Israeli forces 
hauled the mobile classrooms on trucks and took them away under the 
pretext they were established without Israeli permission.

Locals reportedly attempted to block the confiscation of the classrooms, 
which Breijieh reiterated were licensed. Israeli soldiers fired tear gas 
canisters and rubber-coated steel bullets at the residents to disperse 
them, without causing any injury, according to Wafa.

Sami Marwa, director of the education department in Bethlehem, told the 
news agency that the school was set up to serve several small 
communities in the area, and had enrolled 64 students.

He said teachers and staff had been preparing for the first day of 
school since Sunday. The school consisted of eight mobile homes, 
Brejiyeh told Ma’an when the stop-work orders were delivered 
<http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=778730>, when Israeli forces 
also confiscated vehicles donated by an Italian NGO.

After the classrooms were hauled away, the Palestinian Ministry of 
Education started seeking an alternative school for the children to 
attend, Wafa said.

The Norwegian Refugee Council released a statement later Wednesday 
condemning Israel for the confiscation as part of "a wider attack on 
education in Palestine."

NRC Policy Manager Itay Epshtain, who visited Jubbet al-Dhib this 
morning, was quoted in the statement as saying, “It was heart breaking 
to see children and their teachers turning up for their first day of 
school under the blazing sun, with no classrooms or anywhere to seek 
shelter in, while in the immediate vicinity the work to expand illegal 
settlements goes on uninterrupted.”

According to NRC, some 55 schools in the occupied West Bank are 
threatened with demolition and stop-work orders by Israeli authorities, 
many of them built with funding from the European Union states and other 
donors.

"In the first three months of this year there were 24 cases of direct 
attacks against schools, including incidents where tear gas canisters 
and sound bombs were fired at students on their way to or from school.

Last year, four communities’ educational facilities were demolished or 
confiscated and 256 education-related violations were documented in the 
West Bank, affecting over 29,000 students," NRC's statement said.

“Just when they were due to return to the classroom, Palestinian 
children are discovering that their schools are being destroyed,” NRC 
Country Director for Palestine, Hanibal Abiy Worku, said.

  “What threat do these schools pose to the Israeli authorities? What 
are they planning to achieve by denying thousands of children their 
fundamental right to education?”

“We call on the governments and donors funding Palestinian children’s 
education to exercise all of their influence to prevent this violation 
in all its forms,” Abiy Worku said.

“The destruction of educational structures funded by European money is 
not just a violation of international law. It is also a slap in the face 
to the international community providing aid to the occupied Palestinian 
population in a bid to ensure safe places of learning for children.”

Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the Israeli civil administration contested 
last Thursday that the structures had not received the necessary 
permits, and that the construction was "illegal."

When a spokesperson was contacted again for comment on Wednesday 
following the confiscation and repeated claims from locals that the 
structures were licensed, they said that the building was "a blunt 
violation of stop work orders" and had not received permits.

"Therefore, the confiscation was carried out in accordance to the Civil 
Administrations authorities."

Palestinians living in Area C -- the more than 60 percent of the West 
Bank under full Israeli military control -- must apply for construction 
permits with the Israeli civil administration for any kind of 
development on their lands. However, oftentimes these requests are 
denied and the application process can be lengthy and expensive.

Israeli forcesconfiscated solar panels 
<http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=777828> in Jubbet al-Dhib last 
month that were installed last year with funding from the Dutch 
government, under the pretext that they were built without permits.

Rights groups have highlighted that Israel’s permit system in Area C has 
served to limit Palestinian construction in Israeli-controlled areas of 
the Palestinian territory, where the land is reoriented for the 
expansion of illegal Israeli settlements or for other purposes serving 
the Israeli government or settlers.

Some 150 Palestinians reside in Jubbet al-Dhib, which is neighbored by 
the illegal Noqedim settlement -- home to Israeli Defense Minister 
Avigdor Lieberman -- as well as the illegal El David settlement, in 
addition a number of Israeli outposts, that, despite being illegal even 
under Israeli domestic law, are connected to the power grid and other 
infrastructure.

Meanwhile, approximately 1.25 million schoolchildren started the new 
school year in the occupied West Bank and besieged Gaza Strip after the 
summer holiday ended.

The incident in Jubbet al-Dhib came amid a series of obstacles facing 
Palestinians on the occasion of the first day of school.

Another school, a kindergarten,was demolished 
<http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=778784>in the Bedouin community 
of Jabal al-Baba on August 21.
Israeli police stationed in the Old City of occupied East 
Jerusalemprevented 100 textbooks being delivered to schools 
<http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=778801> located inside the 
Al-Aqsa Mosque compound on Tuesday.
On Wednesday, the mayor of Hebron wasverbally assaulted and threatened 
by Israeli settlers, <http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=778816>as 
the mayor attempted to visit schools inside the Old City to 
inaugurate the first day of school. He was eventually evacuated from the 
area by Israeli soldiers.
-- 
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863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
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