VARIOUS: "Quiet please" say Israeli and Palestinian teachers

Working in a classroom on the frontline of the conflict between Israel and Hamas Islamists requires a lot more than good teaching skills, say the teachers. The Palestinian Gaza town of Beit Hanoun and the Israeli town of Sderot are only five kilometres (three miles) apart. But living under continuous cross border attacks makes the teachers seem very similar. They share the same worries for their students and have to demonstrate a lot more than good teaching. Israel has stepped up air strikes and military incursions into Gaza, which Hamas seized in June after fighting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction. Palestinian militants have frequently pelted southern Israel with rockets since the Jewish state pulled troops and settlers out of the territory in 2005. Few salvoes from Gaza have been deadly, but they spark panic in towns like Sderot and have prompted Israel to label the enclave an "enemy entity" and tighten a blockade on movement in and out. Israeli tanks and bulldozers raid frontier areas, which militants use as a rocket launching ground and lay ambush for roving Israeli commandos. The northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun stands in the forefront of the fighting, only one kilometre from the Israeli-Gaza border. Palestinian teacher Awwad Abu Marasa of the UNRWA boys school in Beit Hanoun often finds himself comforting a grieving child or using classes to counter intolerance in a society riven by fighting -- both internal and with Israel. Many of his former pupils are already dead and are the fathers or brothers of some of the children he now teaches. The teachers had to try and reduce the mental stress faced by the pupils, he said. On the other side of the border, in Sderot, giant concrete blocks stand at the entrance of a high school, where Israeli teacher Atara Orenbuch works daily under screeching sirens. Orenbuch's computer science lessons are regularly disrupted by Palestinian rocket attacks, sending the high school teacher and her pupils dashing for the school's bomb shelter. "The children are afraid for their lives. Besides being tired and hard to concentrate there is fear... You don't know when you will be attacked, You don't know who is the next friend that might be killed," she says. "Instead of only teaching computer science I also have to be a psychologist and a social worker," said Orenbuch. "I hope I never have to be a nurse." As Israeli and Palestinian leaders prepare to meet next week at Annapolis in Maryland in the United States to discuss a peace deal, the strength of Hamas and the violence on Gaza's border raise major questions on both sides about what might happen if Israelits occupation of the West Bank and Palestinians establish their own state. Orenbuch said all she wants is for her pupils to live and learn without the threat of attack. Abu Marasa, who dreams of an independent Palestine, wants the same for his pupils at Beit Hanoun's United Nations school for refugees.

ITN Source | November 26, 2007

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