|
|
September 6, 2002/Elul 29 5762, Vol. 55, No. 1
Returning to school with heightened security
JESSICA STEINBERG
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
JERUSALEM - At 7:25 a.m. on Sept. 1, Ariel Drin, 13, shifted nervously from one foot to the other, waiting with his mother for the school bus to arrive at a busy intersection in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo.
"He has to get all the way to Kiryat Moshe," explained his mother, Hana, referring to a neighborhood across town. "He hates being late on the first day."
Ariel attends a semi-private religious school, which is why a private bus ferries him to school. Most of Israel's 1.6 million school-aged children walk to school or take public transport.
The Drins waited for Ariel's bus at an Egged bus stop filled with Gilo locals, waiting for one of several different bus lines heading into central Jerusalem. One of the bus routes listed was the 32A, which was blown up on June 18, killing 19 Israelis on their way to school and work.
The accordioned double buses pulling in and out of the bus stop were filling up on the morning of Sept. 1.
But a glance into the cars making their way in the early morning traffic found back seats full of school kids, ferried by harried parents looking anxiously at their watches.
Many parents this year seem to be driving or arranging carpools to school, erring on the side of safety rather than risking rides on public buses, which have been frequent targets for suicide bombers.
Hana Drin, who teaches ninth grade at a public high school, also was waiting for her "tremp," Hebrew slang for a ride, to work. Her daughter, who is in 12th grade, got a ride to school.
"Tomorrow she'll go with me," Drin said. "Because of the situation, we're forced to think of ways to get our kids to school."
This year, security and safety, as well as hopes for a peaceful, quiet year, were the wishes expressed by parents, teachers and students.
"You want to think there's hope, but I'm just not so sure," said Ariel Goodman, a father of six, while dropping off Chani, a second grader, at Horev, a religious elementary school in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Old Katamon.
At Horev, security measures include guards at each entrance and a high, refurbished fence around the corner lot. Students will not line up in the yard each morning, and only two classes can be in the school yard at the same time, according to Goodman.
For some parents, guards are enough of a safeguard. Bruria Avidan, shepherding her triplets to their first day of first grade, said security is "very good" at Horev.
Goodman, who is originally from Minneapolis, isn't so sure.
"So long as a suicide bombing hasn't taken place in schools and synagogues, people aren't worried," he said. "They worry about malls and caf‚s because that's already happened."
The students themselves, however, don't seem too concerned about security measures. Life, they say, must go on.
In Kochav Yair, a suburban community that is a 10-minute drive from Kfar Saba and very close to the border with the West Bank, four teenage girls hoped for a Sept. 1 strike to extend their summer vacation, but said that fears of suicide bombings rarely stopped them from taking buses or "tremps" to school or the mall.
Fear, even during the two years of the intifada, is a concept they try not to embrace.
"We're maturing in this 'matzav,'" said Renana Yuzak, 18, using the popular Hebrew term for the security situation. "We grew up in this matzav, with the matzav."
|
