Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, April 1998, Pages 8-9

Special Report

Palestinian School Adds New Trouble With Palestinian Authority to Old Ones With Israeli Occupation

By Barbara Kingsley

Al Amal Hope Flowers Secondary school near Bethlehem is a West Bank institution for Palestinians with two problems—the Israeli authorities and the Palestinian Authority.

Parents couldn’t register their students for school this year after Israeli soldiers restricted movement between villages in the area after a bombing attack. Then, border closures barred parents from going to work, so many parents couldn’t pay tuition. Enrollment dwindled from an expected 450 to 168. Teachers routinely go for long periods without their $400-a-month salaries.

Hope Flowers Secondary, which enlists Israeli volunteers to preach peaceful coexistence between Jews and Palestinians, lives on the fault line of the faltering peace process.

The K-12 school has managed to survive bombings, border closures and grinding poverty. But now it may lose its accreditation and be forced to close its doors.

The Palestinian Authority Education Ministry has issued formal warnings to the school, ordering the headmaster to halt school activities that are “not approved’’and “not licensed.’’

School headmaster Hussein Ibrahim Issa says the warnings are a veiled attempt to stop the school’s use of Israeli volunteers, exchange visits with Israeli schools and the teaching of Hebrew.

“They are treating us like the enemy,’’ Issa says. “We are educators, not politicians. They say education is politics. I say education is education.’’

Some Palestinian officials are concerned the school’s activities could give the impression of “normalizing’’ relations with Israel at a time when relations with the Jewish state have soured over the Netanyahu government’s refusal to halt expansion of Jewish settlements and to carry out expected West Bank withdrawals. Warnings aside, the resulting rancor and uncertainty over the peace process have made it almost impossible for the school to operate, Issa says.

“You can’t teach about peace education with no peace in the area,’’ Issa says. “But they should know we are going ahead with our plan.’’

Issa has shown little interest in compromise in the way he runs his school. “He’s not the least bit apologetic,’’ said Gene Sandretto, an American volunteer who assists the school. “Hussein is more the blockbuster type going full-speed ahead, regardless of what kind of dust he’s kicking up.’’

Issa, 50, grew up in the Deheishe refugee camp after his family’s home was confiscated in 1948. He lived at the camp until 1979 and organized demonstrations against Israel and Jordan. He remembers thinking, “I lost my village, I Iive in a refugee camp, how can you expect me to be nonviolent when I lose my dignity and humanity?’’

Losing by Force

As a young man, however, he read Golda Meir’s autobiography. “I came to believe Israel is very very strong. By force, we are losing.’’ He realized he didn’t know or understand the Israelis. “When I was in Deheishe, I didn’t know about the Jews,” he recalls. “Did they have horns and tails?’’

He decided that if he got a chance he would try to build relations through peace activities, while trying to help Palestinian children. The former UNWRA teacher-trainer started by earning a teaching certificate.

The first peace school was a rented room with no chairs that opened in 1984. Ten years later, he managed to cobble together $100,000, partly through grants from the Dutch government and others, to build a 20-classroom school amidst the stony hills of al Khader, near the Efrat settlement.

Through the years, Issa became a spokesman for Palestinian rights. While he was speaking at the Zionist Federation House, an audience member told him Israel was “a gift to the Jews from God.’’

“Maybe he cheated you,’’ Issa replied. As he recalls the incident, outraged listeners “climbed over desks’’ to get at him. “You can believe what you like,’’ Issa told them. “But don’t take away my land and make me live as a refugee.’’

Some Palestinians tell him talking peace and seeking out even sympathetic Israeli volunteers furthers the occupation. He rejects that charge, just as he has flown in the face of public opinion in his community in the past. After he spoke out against Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait in 1991, a car and bus at the school were bombed.

Palestinian authorities respond that their problems with the school are administrative. The Education Ministry contends Issa hasn’t properly submitted courses for review.

Salah Al-Ta’amari, of the Palestinian Legislative Council says he is setting up a meeting between Issa and the Education Ministry to discuss their differences.

In a letter, Ta’amari says he supports “building bridges between Palestinians and Israelis. At the same time, there is a serious dilemma posed by such programs—they garner a lot of attention and make it appear as if the situation here is okay when it is anything but that. There are unfortunately some elements in Israel and elsewhere that take advantage of this perception to justify continued stalling on peace moves.”

But threats to the school’s existence, both economic and political, are real. Issa contends peace will only come if the two sides can see each other’s humanity. So Issa continues to counsel students against rock-throwing and terrorism, while exposing them to Israeli instructors.

Students at the school have come to realize Israelis “can be very kind and different from the soldiers,’’ said Iman Soboh, a Palestinian teacher at the school for the past two years. “Each Saturday they come. No one asks them.’’ She said the students became especially fond of a particular Israeli Hebrew teacher and were disappointed when she was out sick one day. “I was glad to see that they saw her as their teacher, and not just as an Israeli teacher,’’ Soboh said. There are small victories.

The experiences can be just as eye-opening for the Israeli volunteers. Last November, several volunteers, students and teachers walked over to a neighbor’s home in a show of support after soldiers demolished it.

Saadya Sternberg, 37, of Jerusalem is a Ben-Gurion University philosophy teacher who teaches English to 12th graders at Al Amal. He volunteers to remind himself what life is like for Palestinians living over the Green Line.

“It’s incredibly distressing, but I don’t think that knowing something is distressing is reason to ignore it,’’ says Sternberg, one of about 20 volunteers, most of whom are Israeli. “It’s easier to live in a state of ignorance. The school is in hard times and it may close down. With many things involving the Palestinians, there’s an incredible sense of futility because of what they’re up against. The chance of doing any real good is slim. But there comes a time when you must ignore the futility and do it anyway.’’

Issa says he continues, too, despite an environment in the Mideast that foments malice. But Issa isn’t sure how long the school can continue. Al Amal needs $5,000 a month to operate but is drawing just $1,000 through tuition. Donations have made up some but not all of the remainder. The school has no heat and is short on books and materials, and he has had to go into debt to keep it running.

Often shackled by the troubles of occupation, the headmaster of Al Amal sees the school as a metaphor for fragile peace. “The parents are looking to see if we will succeed or not,’’ says Issa.

“We have to think of students and their future and their life and that there is a chance for peace,’’ says Soboh. “Even in these days when there are lots of troubles, we have to believe tomorrow will be better than today.’’

The school’s address is:

Hope Flowers School
P.O. Box 732
Bethlehem, West Bank via Israel
phone 972-2-740693