Israel Schools

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.

Tami Dumai opened the doors Wednesday of the Arab-Jewish elementary school she runs in northern Israel, unsure that either students or teachers would show up. It was the first day of classes since riots that began last week in the West Bank and Gaza Strip spread to Arab towns and villages inside Israel. Ten Israeli Arabs had been among the approximately 60 people killed in the riots.

When Lesia Mazon arrived at the Amirim Elementary School last September, the 9-year-old Russian immigrant was put directly into a Hebrew-speaking class even though she could not understand what her Israeli teacher was saying, ask a question in the language of her new country or read a book in the unfamiliar alphabet.

It was after dusk 43 years ago today. Arab villagers straggled home from work in the fields, unaware that the Israeli army had imposed a curfew. Border police halted one group of Arabs near the village of Kafr Qasem and fired on them at close range. Other Arabs were shot as they fled. In all, 47 people, including 15 women and 11 children, were killed. That ugly chapter in Israel's history is for the first time getting a formal, systemwide airing in Israeli schools.

Once the Abraham Joshua Heschel Day School in Northridge joins the Internet this week, students there will be able to send and receive electronic mail from Arab and Jewish children at a junior-senior high school in Israel. The Jewish Federation Council has set up the computer correspondences between the Jewish day school in Northridge with a school in Ajami Lev-yaffo that has a mostly Arab student body with some Jewish children, said council spokesman Jay Schuster.

Red-haired Ariel Weiss embarrassed his young friends as they debated about Israelis making peace with their neighbors. "I don't mean to sound racist," he told his classmates, setting his jaw defiantly. "But even if I grow up in a generation of peace, I won't tell my children that an Arab is like a Jew. I think we should treat the Arabs like humans, but don't trust them too much." Ariel's comments brought groans from his fellow 14-year-olds. But some sympathized.

Students carried gas masks with their textbooks as Israeli high schools reopened for the first time since the Persian Gulf War began, and Foreign Minister David Levy said Israel was studying ways to stop Iraq's missile attacks. Levy gave no details. Defense Minister Moshe Arens told ABC-TV that Israel could help neutralize the Scud missiles but that it would do so only in cooperation with the forces allied against Iraq.

More than a million Israeli schoolchildren will get an intensive course in the use of gas masks and other ways of surviving chemical warfare to prepare for a possible Iraqi attack, officials said Sunday. The program, to begin when school starts Sept. 2, follows threats earlier this year by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to attack Israel with chemical weapons if an Israeli nuclear attack is aimed at Iraq.

Israel permitted the second Palestinian university in the West Bank to reopen Friday, nearly three years after it closed all four-year colleges in the occupied territories. Four Arab universities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip remain closed by Israeli military order. The Defense Ministry said the decision to let the Vatican-run Bethlehem University reopen was part of a new policy adopted by Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir's government in May.