Holy Land: Christian volunteers escort kindergarten children to school

Christian Peacemaker Team volunteers have begun escorting Palestinian children as young as four to school each day, to protect them from harassment by soldiers and illegal settlers.

The Red Crescent Kindergarten School is well equipped with carpeted floors, multiple rooms for playing and learning, as well as all the supplies needed to teach and entertain the youngsters. Most importantly, it has caring teachers dedicated to their young pupils. In 2000, the school had ten teachers and 90 students, but now there are only three teachers and 15 students, because the school is in a particularly vulnerable location: immediately next to the Ibrahimi Mosque and the Tomb of the Patriarchs. This site is now surrounded by Israeli Border Police, who, together with the settlers moving in to the area, have made it difficult for children and teachers to reach the school. As the children experienced more and more harassment, many parents in the nearby neighbourhoods stopped sending their children there.

In response to this harassment and the effect it has had on the school children, the principal of the Red Crescent Kindergarten asked CPT to begin escorting the children to and from school.

One form of structural violence that the four-year-olds must face on their way to school each is a divided path by the Ibrahimi Mosque. On one side of a tall fence is a wide, paved path for Israeli settlers, and on the other is a narrow, rocky path for Palestinians. Israeli Border Police have recently begun to deny these kindergarten students the right to walk on the “settler path.”

On 18 February, while CPTers were escorting the children to school, Israeli forces said that the children could not walk on the paved “settler” path. When CPTers challenged the new rule, the border police told them: “I don’t make the rules.”

The children had to walk up the path littered with broken garbage and rubble in order to reach their school. This same struggle took place on the afternoon walk back home.

The Principal from the kindergarten came down and talked with the Border Police about their new decision. She demanded that the Border Police allow the children to walk on the side of the fence that is safer and not covered with garbage and sharp rocks. The arbitrary nature of the Border Police’s segregation rule became evident when, on the following day, the children were allowed to walk to and from school on the paved path.

Holding hands with their new CPT friends helps the children feel safe and less scared. The teachers remain steadfast in their commitment to their students and their right to walk on the safer path.

Source: CPT