Last update - 00:00 27/08/2007
Education, Defense Ministries clash over Sderot schools
By Barak Ravid and Mijal Grinberg, Haaretz Correspondents
Education Minister Yuli Tamir's overview to the cabinet Sunday of the school situation in Sderot devolved into a confrontation with Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai over measures to protect the schools against rocket strikes.
Tamir said she wanted the defense minister "to sign off on guaranteeing the pupils' safety" so that schools in Sderot and communities around the Gaza Strip could open next week. Vilnai countered: "The defense minister will sign off on that if you guarantee no violence in schools and if the transportation minister guarantees there will be no traffic accidents."
The Sderot parents' committee was enraged by Vilnai's statement, which they said just goes to prove their claim that the schools are currently not safe.
"If the Defense Ministry and the government believe that the existing protective measures, which are partial, are sufficiently safe, then they can guarantee this in writing and take responsibility for the existing protection. If they don't guarantee this, then evidently they do not believe in the existing protection," said a committee member, Batya Katar.
The parents' committee has made such a guarantee a condition for opening the schools.
Over the next year, 16 new schools are supposed to be built in Sderot and other communities in the region, in compliance with safety criteria stipulated by the High Court of Justice. Until then, the court ordered that safety measures meet Home Front Command criteria i.e., designated safe zones in the existing schools.
Senior Education Ministry officials later said that Tamir meant that the Home Front Command still had to announce that all of the existing schools had usable safe areas.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said at Sunday's meeting that the new schools in Sderot would have the best available safety measures. "I did not change my mind that the level of protection in the safe zones as determined by the Home Front Command was sufficient," Olmert said, "but the government respects the court ruling on this matter."
He added that he "got a strong impression that education personnel in Sderot can be relied on. Sderot's children are like all the children of Israel and the government will stand by them on a daily basis to return their lives to normal."
Three Qassam rockets hit the Western Negev Sunday, landing in open areas. There were no casualties, but one rocket sparked a fire.