More the a thousand schoolchildren, boys and girls from 6 to 14, wearing their school uniforms and 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 and others joined the protest.

Throughout the demonstration, giant cranes continued to lift concrete slabs into place, and a strong force of the Border Police was deployed along the path of the wall. "They are waiting for one boy to throw a stone, in order to attack us with tear gas and rubber-coated bullets, like last 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 the distance between the pupils and the Border Policemen was only a few yards. After most of the demonstrators had already dispersed, some children threw stones and the policemen promptly stormed forward and used tear gas.

Since the Israeli Supreme Court permitted the government to build the wall in this particular sector, the wall has been going up at great speed. Only a few "holes" remain. When the wall will be 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 to be closed and their pupils will roam the streets, because the remaining schools, already overcrowded, will not be

 able to absorb them. Haaretz reports today that a similar situation exists in near-by al-Issawiyeh.

This is only one of the problems caused by the wall, which is cutting off a-Ram residents from their businesses and working-places, hospitals, universities and even their cemetery.

------------------

Let the People Live! Let the Children Learn!
Call to Action, Gush Shalom, 13 September 2004

A concrete wall is rapidly being built to surround the Ar-Ram neighborhood from all sides. Tens of thousands of people, the entire community of this East Jerusalem neighborhood (the vast majority of whom are official residents of Jerusalem, paying municipal taxes and holding "blue" Jerusalem IDs) will be closed inside a ghetto, isolated from the rest of the world.

The wall seriously disrupts the recently begun school year. Educational institutions in A-Ram and in its vicinity are on the verge of being closed down, as the wall prevents the students and the teachers from reaching them.

Thus, for instance, "Al Yatim al Arabi", an institute which for the past sixty years made sure that Palestinian orphans go through high-school and learn a profession, is about to close down. About 95% of its students and teachers - several hundreds strong - will be left on the other side of the wall from the school. Once the wall is complete, the students will find themselves in the streets, with no education and no professional training.

Is this the means of achieving security?
Come and protest against the suffocating wall!

On Monday, the 13 of September, [was] a joint, Palestinian-Israeli rally against the wall. School children will attend the rally and describe their new "educational" reality.