   
"Let Us Study!" Schools Protest Against the Wall at Al-Ram
Report, Gush Shalom, 13 September 2004
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| Children from Al-Ram schools attended the demonstration |
More than 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, TaÂ’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.
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| A school boy protests as a crane moves a slab of the wall into place |
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 is 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.
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| School girls march aganist the wall |
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.
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