More the a thousand schoolchildren, boys and girls from 6 to 14, wearing their school uniformsand carrying bags, demonstrated today (Monday, 13.9) at the wall that is being built in a-Ram.The pupils carried posters demanding: “Let Us Study!”
150 Israeli activists of Gush Shalom, Ta’ayush, Bat-Shalom, Rabbis for Human Rights andothers joined the protest.
Throughout the demonstration, giant cranes continued to lift concrete slabs into place, anda strong force of the Border Police was deployed along the path of the wall. “They are waitingfor one boy to throw a stone, in order to attack us with tear gas and rubber-coated bullets, likelast time,” said Uri Avnery. However, the teachers succeeded all through the demonstration,with the help of mayor Sirkhan Saleimeh, in preventing even one stone being thrown, though thedistance between the pupils and the Border Policemen was only a few yards. After most of thedemonstrators had already dispersed, some children threw stones and the policemen promptlystormed forward and used tear gas.
Since the Israeli Supreme Court permitted the government to build the wall in this particularsector, the wall has been going up at great speed. Only a few “holes” remain. When the wall willbe finished, it will cut the children of a-Ram off from their schools which are located on the“Israeli” side of the wall, at a distance of a few dozen meters. Some of the schools will have tobe closed and their pupils will roam the streets, because the remaining schools, alreadyovercrowded, will not be able to absorb them. Haaretz reports today that a similar situationexists in near-by al-Issawiyeh.
This is only one of the problems caused by the wall, which is cutting off a-Ram residents fromtheir businesses and working-places, hospitals, universities and even their cemetery.