Another damn thing
A couple of days ago, by military order, the IOF shut down the checkpoint into a boys school. The military told the teachers and students that it would be closed for the next week. It was a totally arbitrary and random decision, another one of many things the occupation does to create havoc and insecurity amongst the Palestinian population of Hebron.
Today, we accompanied a couple of CPT team members to observe a protest that was called by the school principal at the checkpoint. We arrived at 7:15 am, after traveling for a half hour around town to get there. Had it not been for the closer, more direct road being blockaded by the IOF, it was a trip that might have taken just 5 minutes or so. More deliberate power-flexing annoyance.
The principal showed up soon after we arrived and chatted with the teachers who were sitting in their cars to keep warm. Then kids came straggling in. At 7:30 a TV reporter showed up with his camera on a tripod. I counted about 15 teachers and 30 students.
Together they all went up to the checkpoint to attempt to get in. No dice. Back they came to stand in the paved area between the gate and the checkpoint, boys playing soccer with water bottles and roughhousing, teachers and principal taking turns doing interviews with the TV guy.
The Palestine Authority Minister of Education was supposed to show up, but he was a no show. One of our CPT friends said, “Even if Abbas (the president of the PA) showed up, it wouldn’t make any difference.”
The word we got was that the IOF wanted the students and teachers to walk around to another checkpoint to enter the school, a walk of about 15 minutes. But the concern among the teachers was that, if they did that, it would lead to this checkpoint being permanently closed. So it appeared that the call was to keep resisting this checkpoint closure.
Still, everyone seemed a bit unphased by the closure, despite the interruption in the life of the school and the imposed inconvenience. Just one more damn thing in a daily routine of harassment.