In Nablus, Back-Room Schools Spring Up to Spite Curfew
Tracing the letter A in the air, Jamila Mabruk introduced a group of Palestinian second-graders to the English alphabet this week in a cramped classroom set up in a shoemaking workshop.

The class was part of what people here call a "popular school," informal lessons organized by Nablus residents in response to an Israeli Army curfew that has kept local schools shut since the second day of classes.

"We're fighting them with the A B C's," Ms. Mabruk, a 20-year-old college student, said of the Israeli soldiers who occasionally appear on the streets in tanks and armored personnel carriers. "They want us to be ignorant and backward. We say no. We want to learn."

Ms. Mabruk's class was one of dozens that have sprung up across this city of 150,000, whose residents have been confined to their homes since June 21, with occasional breaks to stock up on supplies.

The army says that the curfews here and in five other West Bank cities are necessary to stop militants planning attacks on Israelis, and that Nablus in particular has been a main source of suicide attacks in Israel. Visiting the Nablus area this week, the army's chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon, said that the stiff curfew there was necessary to break up militant networks still active in the city.

Palestinians call the curfews collective punishment, and argue that schools, at the very least, should be exempt.

The severity of the disruption to the school year, which began on Aug. 31, has varied city by city. In Ramallah, where the curfew has occasionally been lifted during the day, six school days have been lost. In Nablus, where the curfew has been almost constant, schools closed after only a day.

To make up for the lost lessons, people here have organized classes in private apartments, unfinished buildings and other spaces donated by residents. Math, science, Arabic and English are taught by volunteers — teachers, college students, and professionals who normally work at other jobs. Students have to make their way to classes in their neighborhoods when soldiers are not around.

"We're doing what we can not to to lose this generation," said Ibrahim Hamouz, an engineer who was teaching fractions to a group of sixth graders in his sister's unfinished apartment. Boys sat on the floor, notebooks in their laps, as Mr. Hamouz wrote figures on a marker board propped on a chair. Girls, some in school uniforms, sat in the back.

Other grades met in adjacent rooms, some using homemade worksheets and photocopies from textbooks collected by the volunteers.

"We in Palestine don't have oil and gold, just human beings," Mr. Hamouz said, "and we must educate these human beings, starting from the kids."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/24/international/middleeast/24NABL.html