JERUSALEM — In the besieged Jewish neighborhood of Gilo, clowns, balloons and well-armed police greeted thousands of children and teens Sunday as they arrived for their first day of class knowing that some of their schools are now within Palestinian mortar range.
Four-year-old Shirli Afriat, her eyes looking as wide as silver dollars, clasped her mother's hand tightly and peered around her kindergarten classroom. The teacher was welcoming children and giving words of assurance to apprehensive parents. For this first day, at least, Shirli's mom, Ricky, stayed with her for the entire session.
"The mortar bomb landed right here next to the school!" Ricky Afriat said, referring to an attack last week. "It's very scary. But I don't want her to panic," she said, nodding toward the little girl, hair pulled back in a long ponytail, who was fingering her pink Princess Sissi backpack.
Across Israel, 1.5 million children were attending the first day of school Sunday in a very different atmosphere from the one at this time last year. Eleven months of blood-soaked turmoil have turned the worlds of Israeli and Palestinian children upside down and left them traumatized, uncertain and pessimistic about the future. That goes double for their parents.
About 1 million Palestinian children began school Saturday, many forced to pass through Israeli army roadblocks to reach their destinations, which Palestinian officials said included nearly 100 schools badly damaged by Israeli shelling. Other Palestinian schools have been seized or closed by the army because of their proximity to Israeli installations or Palestinian firing positions.
And the children of Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip rode in armored buses to their schools, some arriving late on Sunday because there weren't enough buses to go around. A Palestinian bomb ripped through a settler school bus last fall, killing two teachers and maiming several children.
For Israelis, Gilo represented a special case. The community on Jerusalem's southern outskirts has come under repeated gunfire from Palestinian shooters in the nearby Palestinian-controlled village of Beit Jala. Although no Israeli has been killed and fewer than a dozen have been seriously injured, the stakes were raised again last week when the Israeli army invaded Beit Jala to stop the shooting and Palestinians responded with potentially more lethal, and longer-range, mortar fire.
