Reem, Muna and their classmates learn to make little dolls. (Florian Vande Walle)

Since September 2009, seventy children of the Bedouin community Jahalin in al-Khan al-Ahmar have been going to school close to their homes, between Jericho and Jerusalem. But it is unclear whether these children will be able to attend their necessary lessons next year. By the end of the current school year in July, the Israeli Civil Administration will decide whether the demolition will go ahead. If this threat materializes, the children will be deprived of their education.

To displace their mosque, the Bedouins of al-Khan al-Ahmar received small compensation as pacification.(Florian Vande Walle)

In April 2009, international volunteers with the support of some organizations started to build a school out of old car tyres, sand and mud. The Italian Cooperation for Development equipped the school with more facilities, allowing seventy children from five Bedouin communities between 6 and 12 years old to receive their necessary education there since September 2009. Up until then, these Bedouin children had to travel to Jericho or Aziriya. These towns are only 25 kilometres away, but the journey is associated with numerous risks. Because this territory is classified as Area C, Israel forbids school buses with Palestinian license plates from driving on some parts of their roads. The bus drivers were fined daily and eventually stopped driving because they became scared of losing their driver’s licenses. During the past two years, four children have been killed on their way to school while trying to cover the distance by hitchhiking.

Although the lives of Reem, her sister Muna and the other children brightened up considerably since the opening of the al-Khan al-Ahmar School, their futures are now again in danger. Ironically, this Jahalin community live where the Biblical parable of the Good Samaritan supposedly took place. In sharp contrast to the injured Jew who was helped by the Samaritan, the Bedouins and their children are threatened by the Jewish settlers. Decades after the Bedouins arrived in this region, and after being expelled from the Negev desert in 1948, the settlements of Ma’ale Adumim and Kfar Adumim were built by Jewish settlers, who try to frighten away the Bedouins with the support of the state of Israel.

To displace their mosque, the Bedouins of al-Khan al-Ahmar received small compensation as pacification.(Florian Vande Walle)

Every tent, shack, well and even the mosque used by the Bedouins is under demolition orders. From the start, the Israeli Civil Administration, which is subordinate to the Israeli Defense Ministry, forbade the community to build and it continues to consider illegal every structure built here, even those constructed years before the administration took the right to oversee the use of the land.

As this article is published, the Israeli road enterprise Maatz is excavating the hill where the village is located. As part of the Jordan-Israel Peace Treaty, Israel is enlarging the road that goes from Jerusalem to Amman, at the expense of the Bedouins. For the displacement of their mosque, the Bedouin community received only a small compensation as a pacifier – not because it was felt that they had a right to the land.

To enlarge the road from Jerusalem to Amman, the school has already been forced to replace the bathroom and to cut a metre and half off a classroom. (Florian Vande Walle)

As a consequence of the road enlargement, the school was also forced to demolish the bathroom. “To meet the demands of the court, we cut one metre and a half from a classroom, just to nail down to the peremptory length of 70 meters of the road”, explains the manager of the school Hanan Awwad, who is in charge of five teachers.

Hanan Awwad, the manager of the al-Khan al-Ahmar School: "Every citizen of Palestine has a right to receive education, and that includes these Bedouin children." (Florian Vande Walle)

“For our school, the demolition order is not implemented yet. The Public Court already demanded the demolition, but the High Court refused it. Now, the settlers want to make a new road that goes through the school, just to demolish it by law. The High Court will only go along this line if the case is framed into a big master plan for the whole area that will justify the illegality of the building and that offers a solution for the Bedouins and their children as well.”