Palestine: No Child Left Unharassed: The Obstacle Course to School

He began first grade even before turning five. In ninth grade, he began attending a school for gifted students. He loved physics, and thought of pursuing the subject at the university level, but his mother thought he would be better off learning a more "social" profession, one in which he would have contact with people. In 1999, when he was 17, he decided to enroll in the faculty of medicine at Al Quds University at Abu Dis for three reasons, he says: He was awarded an academic scholarship, the studies are held in English, and the campus is close to home--an hour or an hour and a half by car.

Ahmed al-Najjar, soon to be 24, and in his last year of medical school, smiles bashfully as he says "close to home." He does not elaborate, allowing the listener to imagine the meaning of "close to home" to someone who for the past five years has not seen his family or frien! ds. Al-Najjar, who was born in Jabalya, the refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, also allows the listener to imagine how it was to be caught that same morning, Saturday, January 7, by a Border Policeman.

He tells the story: "As I do every day, I jumped off the wall to the roof of one house, and from there to the roof of a second house, then I made my way through the alleys, heading for the bus that would take me to Al-Hilal [the women's hospital operated by the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem]. But today a soldier got on the bus and checked ID cards. Luckily, he knows me. `This is the second time that I've caught you,' he said. `What can I do?' I answered. `I have to get to work at the hospital.'"

No safe passage

Even during his first year of medical school, when the "safe passage" between Gaza and the West Bank was still open, he made only three or f! our visits home: It was possible to take the safe passage only on Mond ays and Wednesdays, meaning not on weekends, when there are no classes. Registration was required a week in advance, and the trip--including the long wait at the checkpoints--took hours.

In October 2000, even the safe passage option was cancelled. Since then, he has seen his widowed mother twice. She developed skin cancer, and on two occasions, and with a great deal of effort, she was issued a permit to go to the West Bank for treatment.

Israeli authorities consider Al-Najjar an illegal sojourner in the West Bank: when he sits in class, when he walks in the street, when he leans over the desk in his rented apartment in Abu Dis, reading. He applied twice to the Palestinian interior ministry to request that his address be changed on his Palestinian ID card from Jabalya to Abu Dis, but the request was denied. He says the Palestinian officials contended that there was no reason to carry out the ch! ange, because Israel would refuse to change its own records.

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