Schools closed five months ago for security reasons were reopened by the Israeli authorities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip on Monday with a warning that they could be shut down again at the first sign of trouble.
Classes were resumed at 414 elementary schools and 190 kindergartens. Preparatory or junior high schools are to reopen next week, and high schools a week after that.
The Israeli authorities are proceeding cautiously on the assumption that the higher the grade, the greater the potential for violence erupting in the student body. There are no plans at the moment to reopen the Arab universities in the West Bank.
The return to school was without incident Monday. Attendance was between 80 and 90 percent.
The Israeli authorities hope to demonstrate by this their control over the territories. The school reopenings, however, were fully in accords with the wishes of the Palestinian nationalist underground.
Nationalist circles have been urging the population to let their children return to classes so that “Israel will not deprive the children of education.”
Brig. Gen. Shaike Erez, head of the civil administration in the West Bank, stressed Monday that the army would not hesitate to close the schools again it they become hotbeds of violent demonstrations as in the past.
Meanwhile, three Palestinians were wounded in clashes with security forces in Nablus on Sunday. Rioting broke out in Tulkarm on Saturday following forces there Friday.
MOLOTOV COCKTAIL KILL TWO
Two people died and three were injured, one seriously, in Molotov cocktail attacks in the West Bank over the weekend.
The fatalities were an Arab woman, Shamsiya Kaadan, 65, and her son, Mohammad Kaadan, 35, from Deir Roussoun village in Samaria. Their car was attacked with a firebomb while passing through Shuweika village, north of Tulkarm, Friday night.
The mother and son were returning from a Tulkarm hospital, where Mohammad’s wife was about to give birth. Israeli authorities suspect the attackers mistook their car for an Israeli vehicle.
A gasoline bomb was thrown at a military vehicle earlier in the evening without causing casualties.
But a resident of Jerusalem, Yaacov Askayo, 28, was seriously burned when a Molotov cocktails crashed through the windshield of his car while he was driving through Jericho on Friday night.
He was hospitalized at the Hadassah Medical Center in Ein Kerem with burns covering 60 percent of his body.
Two other Israelis were slightly injured when gasoline bombs were thrown at their car Sunday in the West Bank town of Kalkilya.
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