Reports from Amman Jordan
by Samah Sabawi
| Part VII - The Learning Experience About an hour’s drive from where I sat peacefully, and at the exact same time, worried Palestinian parents and their terrified children were having to live through a different kind of schooling experience... |
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September 6, 2004
Amman, Jordan Finally! I breathed a sigh of relief, all too familiar to mothers around the world. Once again, I had managed to get the children ready for school. They were well equipped with money in pocket, snack in lunch box and school-books in knapsack. I had made sure they were given a dose of confidence, another of love and a really potent dose of motherly nagging - urging them to leave before they missed the school bus. I watched as the yellow school bus drove into the dense traffic, and I smiled. My time had begun. I fixed myself a cup of coffee and picked up AlQuds, the Jerusalem based Palestinian daily newspaper. Savoring the precious peace and quiet, I began to read. Once again I was made to feel as if I lived in a parallel universe. About an hour’s drive from where I sat peacefully, and at the exact same time, worried Palestinian parents and their terrified children were having to live through a different kind of schooling experience. In the old city of Hebron in the occupied territories, Palestinian parents and students greeted the new school year with heavy hearts. Hebron is made up of 160,000 mostly Muslim and Christian Palestinian residents, with only 450 Jewish settlers who live right in the middle of the old city, protected by the IDF and given free reign to travel along the roads that Palestinians are denied, and to exploit their water and land resources. The Jewish settlers of Hebron are extremists whose goal is to cleanse the city of its Palestinian inhabitants. It was in Hebron that a Jewish extremist slaughtered 29 Muslims praying in a mosque in 1994 – more than six years before the eruption of this current intifada. Jeehad Kawasmy of Al-Quds reported from Hebron that Palestinian parents were forced to accompany their terrified girls to the girls' school in hope of protecting them from settler aggression which has become a common occurrence, especially on Jewish religious holidays. I remembered reading about a program of the Word Council of Churches which sends volunteers to that same district to accompany the children to school and back. E.A. Neil, a volunteer with that program, wrote in an article of how the settlers would come in and smash the glass windows of the classrooms, and how no one would come to the district where the school is located to repair the glass, “forcing the girls to go through the cold damp winter in freezing classrooms.” Neil also wrote about Stars of David being daubed on the walls with other graffiti that reads in Hebrew, “Death to the Arabs”. According to AlQuds, many students didn’t want to go to school today out of fear of the harassment and violence that awaits them at the hands of the settlers. I put down my paper and my coffee mug and felt embarrassed by my five-star Palestinian experience. I thought of my friend Linda, of Canpalnet-Ottawa in Canada, who requested that I write a rebuttal to a Zionist propaganda piece on how Palestinians teach their children to hate - and of how the words escaped me. References: United Nations Information System on the Question of Palestine: QUESTION OF THE VIOLATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE OCCUPIED ARAB TERRITORIES, INCLUDING PALESTINE Note: Section E: Violations against educational institutions
Samah
Sabawi, originally from
Gaza
and whose permanent residence is now
Ottawa, is a writer, playwright and well-known activist. Her articles
appear in several popular online journals. Her Palestinian Diary
is exclusive to YayaCanada.
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