Separation fence keeps Issawiya students from attending school

Jihad Abu Rajab did not begin fourth grade this year. The 10-year-old has been spending his time at home or in his yard, occasionally going to the village school to see if it will take him this time, and returning home. Last year, he went to Al-Quds al-Islamiyah, a school belonging to the Muslim Waqf in Dahiyat al-Barid, but in recent months, a wall has sprung up between the school and his home in Issawiya, in northern Jerusalem. His parents registered him for the Issawiya village school, but were informed at the beginning of the year that the classrooms of 40 cannot absorb new pupils.

Abu Rajab is one of at least 13 Issawiya pupils from kindergarten through sixth grade who are prevented from attending school due to the separation fence. Their parents used to send their children to schools outside the village - in Semiramis, Kafr Akab, Dahiyat al-Barid - but the fence going up around Jerusalem cut off these neighborhoods and villages from the rest of the city, making school attendance a complicated and time-consuming mission. Parents prefered to leave their kids in the village, and registered them at the end of last year for the state elementary school there. However, just days before school began, it became apparent that nobody in the Jerusalem Education Authority had prepared for the imminent changes prompted by the fence, and more students had registered than the school could absorb. Most of the girls were admitted to the slightly more spacious girl's school, but the principal of the crowded boy's school refused to admit new students.

As a result, the boys spend their days "running in the street and endangering themselves," according to council chairman Darwish Darwish. "Just yesterday, I had to mediate a neighbors' brawl because of kids who had been playing outdoors all day." Darwish and a residents group met last week with the official in charge of East Jerusalem schools, Suheila Abu-Ghosh, who promised the displaced children admittance to the school in neighboring Beit Hanina, with transportation funded by the municipality. That promise has remained just that, and Abu Rajab's school year is still on hold.

For the past two years, Issawiya students who attended schools elsewhere have had trouble getting to school on time - even before the separation fence went up. A checkpoint at the main entrance to Issawiya that operates irregularly, usually in the morning, holds up school transportation, so pupils are sometimes forced to transfer to another vehicle waiting on the other side to take them to school.

Would-be fifth-grader Karim Mustafa previously attended a school in Shuafat and would occasionally arrive two hours late because of the checkpoint. His parents registered him at the local school this year, "so he wouldn't keep arriving at different times," and he too was barred for lack of room.

The segment of the separation fence in northern Jerusalem prompted a population shift from areas near the fence toward more central neighborhoods, with considerable ramifications for the school system. Some schools, like that in Issawiya, are filled beyond capacity; others can expect to empty out. Students and teachers on both sides of the fence going up will be cut off from their schools, placing the fate of some schools in question, and raising the question of where some students will attend school.

"The problem will reach its height in a month or two, when the fence is complete," says A-Ram council head Sirhan Salima, warning that "the disaster is coming."

This afternoon, students and parents from neighborhoods bifurcated by the fence, along with Israeli leftist organizations, are planning to hold a demonstration under the banner "Let us study."

A Jerusalem Education Authority spokesman responded that "the Issawiya school is full to capacity. The pupils who applied recently were offered places in a nearby municipal school in the Beit Hanina neighborhood. We have no information regarding other students."