IOF demolish village school, residents build up tent instead

Residents of the Jibbet Al-Theeb village east of Bethlehem, central West Bank, this morning set up a tent to be used as a school for the village students, after ISraeli Occupation Forces demolished the caravans used as classrooms.

As Palestine starts its school year today, the 65 students of the school began their first day under the sun. They collected some of  the chairs left after Israel demolished and confiscated the classes.

The residents cleaned the area and collected the teargas grenades and bullets thrown by IOF in the area before the start of the classes.

For their part, representatives of the Wall and Settlement Resistance organization erected a tent in the yard where the caravans used to be, in the presence of the Director of Education in Bethlehem, Sami Mroua,  representatives of the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee and journalists.

The governor of Bethlehem, Major General Jibrin al-Bakri, denounced the demolition, describing it as a crime and ethnic cleansing, during a tour of a number of schools in the targeted villages of Bethlehem.

Al-Bakri stressed that all the components of popular and official work have spread to the village of Jibt  al-Theeb in order to emphasize the support of the village and its people, and to strengthen their steadfastness and their right and their children’s right to education and stay in their village.

Al-Bakri stressed that the installation of tents in the area to use it as a school aims to emphasize the rights of students and devotion to be educated, especially when the village is located in an isolated area and surrounded by illegal settlements.

Al-Bakri stressed that there are legal and human rights teams to follow up on what happened through legal means and local and international human rights organizations to cancel the Israeli decision to remove and demolish the school.

On the other hand, Al-Bakri visited the villages of Beit Skariya and Al-Jabaa to the west of Bethlehem governorate, where he distributed school bags to the students, stressing that the tour aimed to see the needs and participate in the launch of the new academic year.

Source: PNN