Umm al-Khair, occupied West Bank<\/strong> \u2013 Just old enough to utter complete sentences in a small, wavering voice, Masa Hathaleen, five, stands before the barbed wire fence blocking her path to school. \u201cI am Masa,\u201d she pleaded. \u201cPlease open the road for us. We want to go to school. We are not doing anything wrong. We just have our books. We love our school.\u201d<\/p>\n Masa was one of dozens of children, book bags in tow, who marched on Sunday morning towards the fence that now blocks the route the youngsters of the Bedouin community of Umm al-Khair have used for decades to reach their school in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The schoolchildren held up posters, sang songs and chanted in English at soldiers who watched from the other side: \u201cOpen the road!\u201d<\/p>\n list of 3 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n For more than 40 days during the US-Israeli war on Iran, Palestinian schools were closed in the area. But last week when a ceasefire allowed Palestinian schools in the West Bank to reopen \u2013 even if for only three days a week \u2013 the children in Umm al-Khair arrived to find the fence blocking the path to their school a kilometre (0.6 miles) away.<\/p>\n When the children tried to go around the fence, soldiers launched tear gas and sound grenades at children as young as five years old.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a very violent situation,\u201d said Khalil Hathaleen, the head of the Umm al-Khair village council, whose young children are among those attending the school. \u201cUntil now, some children haven\u2019t returned to the site because of fear. They can\u2019t sleep.\u201d<\/p>\n Security camera footage recorded by community members showed settlers coming during the night to erect the barbed wire fence. Despite being erected without legal authorisation, soldiers have refused to take down the barrier in a community that faces imminent Israeli demolition orders later this month due to a lack of building permits. Such permits are almost never granted to Palestinians in Area C of the West Bank, which is entirely under the control of Israel.<\/p>\n Shortly after the fence went up, a large Star of David was built with stones by settlers on the side of the fence that the Palestinian schoolchildren can no longer access.<\/p>\n Desperate to get their children back in school, the community launched Sunday\u2019s march as part of a new initiative, \u201cthe Umm al-Khair Freedom School\u201d.<\/p>\n At 7am, parents, teachers and community members walked beside their children who held a banner declaring \u201cUmm al-Khair Freedom School\u201d before reaching the fence. On the other side, several Israeli soldiers stood and watched \u2013 at times waving mockingly and mimicking the children\u2019s songs along with a security guard of the adjacent illegal Israeli settlement of Carmel, which villagers said had erected the barrier.<\/p>\n For several hours, the children banged on drums and sang defiant songs while soldiers watched metres away. For stretches of time, the children sat down on rocks adjacent to the barbed wire, took out their books and began working on schoolwork they\u2019ve been deprived of for more than 50 days.<\/p>\n \u201cEducation is a right for everyone, including the children of Umm al-Khair,\u201d said Tareq Hathaleen, who teaches grades four through eight at the blocked school. \u201cIt\u2019s not right to block their road.\u201d<\/p>\n According to Khalil Hathaleen, the path was established in 1980 and is recorded on both Israeli Civil Administration and Palestinian maps as a designated pedestrian route for students. It also serves women walking to a nearby health clinic and worshippers heading to the mosque, which they also can no longer access.<\/p>\n Since settlers erected the fence, Israeli authorities have offered an alternative, longer route, roughly 3km (2 miles) in length, but residents unanimously rejected this new route because it would force children to pass through new settler outposts erected next to their community. Israeli settlements and outposts on occupied land are illegal under international law. Since last summer, several settler caravans have been installed on that same road.<\/p>\n Last summer, Awdah Hathaleen was killed in that area. Yinon Levy, an internationally sanctioned settler, was arrested and charged in his fatal shooting. Levy worked to clear land in Umm al-Khair to prepare for the arrival of the caravans, which now sit directly behind the village\u2019s community centre and family homes. Even after being filmed shooting Awdah Hathaleen, Levy kept returning to the village to complete the land-clearing work.<\/p>\n The dangers in the area have only grown since. According to Eid Hathaleen, a parent of three school-age children, settlers have scattered wooden planks with protruding nails along the roadside, damaging cars. Settlers\u2019 vehicles, sometimes driven at speed by teenagers, move unpredictably through the area.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can\u2019t leave a child, six years old, to walk near the caravans,\u201d Eid Hathaleen said. \u201cSettlers drive their cars fast. Settlers drive their ATVs in bad behaviour, without control. Some have no licence. I will not be endangering any kid to go through there because it\u2019s dangerous.\u201d<\/p>\n Those fears were sharpened last month when five-year-old Siwar Hathaleen was struck by a settler\u2019s car while crossing through Umm al-Khair. She survived but was admitted to hospital with a head injury.<\/p>\n Now, with the army refusing to remove the barbed wire fence, Eid Hathaleen has struggled to find solutions for his own children. \u201cYou feel useless that kids can\u2019t reach their school because of this blockade,\u201d he said. \u201cThe kids try to show their voice, try to make the best of the situation, but they\u2019re frustrated. They do some lessons in their homes, but it\u2019s not enough.\u201d<\/p>\n Mira Hathaleen, 10 years old and the daughter of Khalil, said at the Sunday protest that she wants to be a doctor. \u201cIf I want to be a doctor, I must learn and have knowledge,\u201d she reasoned. But blocked from school by a fence guarded by soldiers, the situation seemed to her just plain wrong: \u201cWe are children like the children of the rest of the world. They go to school, and we don\u2019t. Why?\u201d<\/p>\n Some children began to tremble as soldiers approached from the other side of the fence, even as their songs and chants grew louder in response. Sara Hathaleen, 13, began to panic and cry.<\/p>\n \u201cI am scared. I am scared,\u201d she said, wiping away tears. But she caught herself after a moment and regained her composure. \u201cIt is a challenge to come here because we have to break the fear just to go to our school,\u201d she said. She wants to be a lawyer someday, she added, \u201cto defend the Palestinian cause and specifically the cause of Umm al-Khair\u201d.<\/p>\n For Sara and her classmates, the fence is only the latest obstacle in years of interrupted schooling \u2013 the result of Palestinian Authority budget cuts after Israel withheld West Bank tax revenues and a wave of school closures brought on by successive wars in recent years.<\/p>\n \u201cYou aren\u2019t talking about one or two children. You are talking about 55 students,\u201d Khalil Hathaleen said. \u201cIn any other country, if this many children couldn\u2019t reach school, the president would resign. But here, there are no solutions apparently.\u201d<\/p>\n Tariq, the teacher for many of the children, sees the fence as part of a broader pattern. \u201cWe see the Israeli authorities are really complicit in what is happening here,\u201d he said. \u201cThis fence, this blockade, is also on private land, and yet they are not doing anything.\u201d<\/p>\n Khalil was unambiguous about the settlers\u2019 intent. \u201cThey want to build new caravans and bring more settlers, so they closed the road to confiscate the land and pressure the families, telling them they won\u2019t be able to learn,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The community is also facing the looming demolition orders affecting nearly the entire village. Khalil Hathaleen issued an appeal to human rights organisations and international observers to intervene, framing both struggles \u2013 blocking the school road and the demolition orders \u2013 as part of the same campaign by settlers and Israeli authorities to erase the community of Umm al-Khair, which sits on the same hill as the illegal Israeli settlement of Carmel.<\/p>\n Until the path to school is reopened, Khalil said, the community will hold daily peaceful demonstrations with lessons, music and activities conducted in the open air at the spot where the path is blocked. \u201cWe will do all the teaching in the sun,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is the only way. If we stay silent, no one will hear us.\u201d<\/p>\n Before departing, the children pressed their handmade signs against the barbed wire, turning them to face the taunting soldiers and settlers on the other side:<\/p>\n \u201cWe like to go to school\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cLet us learn!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Umm al-Khair, occupied West Bank \u2013 Just old enough to utter complete sentences in a small, wavering voice, Masa Hathaleen, five, stands before the barbed wire fence blocking her path to school. \u201cI am Masa,\u201d she pleaded. \u201cPlease open the road for us. We want to go to school. We are not doing anything wrong. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19607,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle-east-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19606\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
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