The residents of Jib al-Dib lost their years-long fight to save their elementary school, leaving dozens of children without proper access to education.
By
Yuval Abraham
May 8, 2023
On Sunday, the Israeli military demolished the elementary school in Jib al-Dib, an unrecognized village adjacent to a string of Israeli settlements in Area C of the occupied West Bank. Village residents reported that soldiers arrived at the building at around 5 a.m., prevented anyone from approaching the demolition site, forbade any documentation of the demolition, and then razed the school to the ground.
“They didn’t let anyone leave the village. They took a journalist’s camera equipment by force, and they didn’t let him through to take photos of the demolition,” said Fadia al-Wahash, a resident of Jib al-Dib. “They wouldn’t even let people out to go to work. Starting at 5 a.m., they blocked off the village. They declared [the area around the school] a closed military zone, there were drones flying in the air, and they destroyed our kids’ school.”
The school, which was attended by 40 children between the ages of 6 and 10, was built around six years ago, part of an initiative by the Palestinian Authority to construct schools in villages whose residents are at risk of expulsion by the Israeli military. According to the residents, before the school was built, the children in Jib al-Dib had to walk an hour each way to school.
The right-wing organization Regavim, which was co-founded by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich — who is also a minister in the Defense Ministry and oversees the Civil Administration, the bureaucratic arm of the occupation — spearheaded the legal fight against the school. Regavim focuses on petitioning for Palestinian structures built without permits to be demolished, and centers its fight on Area C, which is under full Israeli military and administrative control.
Continued at :
https://www.972mag.com/palestinian-school-demolition-unrecognized-village/
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