As barbed wire blocks kids from class, Palestinians stage ‘Freedom School’

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. “I am Masa,” she pleaded. “Please 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.”

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: “Open the road!”
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 – even if for only three days a week – the children in Umm al-Khair arrived to find the fence blocking the path to their school a kilometre (0.6 miles) away.

When the children tried to go around the fence, soldiers launched tear gas and sound grenades at children as young as five years old.

“It was a very violent situation,” said Khalil Hathaleen, the head of the Umm al-Khair village council, whose young children are among those attending the school. “Until now, some children haven’t returned to the site because of fear. They can’t sleep.”

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.