Israeli Kids at School Amid Chaos Arab communities countrywide initiated a three-day school strike, leaving 400,000 Arab students at home and 600 schools closed. Many expressed anger and frustration with the Israeli government, accusing it of neglecting the Arab minority for years.

In Gilo, built on land Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast War, parents delivering their children to their first day at school were apprehensive. The neighborhood came under heavy fire last week, prompting Israel's army to move into Beit Jalla for two days. before pulling out Thursday.

``You have to try to live normally,'' said Hezi Cohen, as he led his daughter Shelli, smartly clad in a white shirt and pleated dress, into her first class, past TV cameramen, photographers and journalists. Moments later the country's premier walked in.

``You have stood up to a hard battle, as if it was no battle at all,'' Sharon told students assembled in the school's gymnasium, under a sign that read ``a year of peace and security for Gilo students.''

``I promise you that I will take the issue of security upon myself, and I won't allow more shooting on Gilo,'' he told the elementary school students.

As the Jewish schools opened on schedule, Raji Mansour, head of a group that is monitoring Arab education, said Israel provides Arab students with only a quarter of the funding it allots to Jewish students.

``The whole country knows there is a wide social division, discrimination and scandal,'' he said. ``There has to be a change of policy -- at least equality (with Jewish schools).''

Schools in the Arab sector need an additional 1,600 classrooms, and the group is demanding a budget increase of $12.5 million, said Atef Moaddi, a member of the monitoring group, called the Follow-up Committee of Arab Education.

In meetings held late last month with the Ministry of Education, the group raised a number of issues, requesting the budget be doubled in order to allow for extra schooling hours, and an expansion of the existing academic system to match standards at Jewish schools.

If the strike does not achieve its demands, educational institutions in the Arab sector will resume their strike Nov. 1, until their demands are met, Moaddi said.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Back-to-School.html