Five Knesset Members requested several days ago that the Knesset relate to the lack of incomplete protection provided for schools in Sderot and environs. The five spoke yesterday (Wednesday), noting that the tragic timing of the debate - just hours after a Sderot woman was killed by a Gazan Arab-fired Kassam rocket - was clearly not planned in advance. Some of them noted, however, that it was a warning sign; MK Ruby Rivlin said, "This tragedy is a red light and an alarm calling upon us and the government to hurry lest it be too late."
Excerpts:
MK Ze'ev Elkin (Kadima):
"I think that what happened in Sderot this morning is just an additional reminder of what the residents experience every morning and every day. When those metal pieces fly in the air, they kill and maim and they have power... We [MKs] met here last week with children from Sderot and we learned that there is a school that has not yet been protected against rockets. But even in schools that have supposedly been protected, I would like to ask the government and the Deputy Defense Minister [the designated government respondent for this issue - ed.] if children can learn properly in such an environment...
"The official State stance is that only some of the classrooms are protected. But then an order was given that the pupils should learn only in those rooms, and as a result, the children of Sderot and environs are learning only part of the day. They study for fewer hours than they need to meet their educational goals, even though we would rather have them learn more and spend more time in protected areas... If we can't change the security situation - though I'm not sure about that, because if you noticed, the Kassams are usually fired in the morning, and the fact that we have now stopped preventive fire in the morning may be what have cost us a woman's life today - but if we can't change that, then the government and State must at least provide normal school conditions for the children."
MK Rabbi Yitzchak Levy (National Union):
"We may have different opinions on how to stop the Kassams, but we all agree about the terrible plight of the children and residents... The panic and fear there are at its height. Until now it was the fear of the noise of the Kassam, and now it's a fear for life...
"We want to demand from the government a comprehensive plan for the children of Sderot. I can include here the day care centers, the nurseries, the schools, the high schools, the Yeshivat Hesder, the girls' seminary, the large college in Safir, and the institutions in the kibbutzim. The area is blessed with children and educational institutions...
"When we met with the children, we heard a great cry from them. We heard children say, 'Our childhood is being stolen away, we can't go outside, our parents go into a panic when we go out, we don't have after-school clubs, we can't play soccer and we can't go anywhere - because they're too scared for us to leave home.'
"...Mr. Deputy Defense Minister, I am always happy to hear you, but I am sorry that the Education Minister is not here; she is in exile [in Los Angeles] with a large part of the government. But we don't want to hear right now about the military options; our issue right now is how the children will be dealt with."
MK Ruby Rivlin (Likud):
"Last week we met here with pupils from Sderot and the Gaza-border area... and we sat opposite them, silently listening to their tribulations. A 10-year-old boy from Sderot said that he has to jump from classroom to classroom every day, because of the lack of reinforced rooms. A youth from a nearby kibbutz wondered aloud how he would be able to take matriculation exams with rockets falling around him, forcing him to quickly find refuge. We realized how hard it is these days to be a student there.
"Then at the same time, we hear that the State has decided not to reinforce any more classes; it told the Supreme Court that the schools will have shelters, protected areas, close enough for each student to run to when he hears the warning alarm... Imagine whether a student can fully concentrate on his studies when the whole time he is taut and tense for the moment he will hear the warning alarm and will have to run for his life? What about a child who can't run so fast or who might fall down in the rush? Solutions like this are a mockery of education and teachers..."
MK Shelly Yechimovitch (Labor):
"In our meeting with the children, we saw that most of them don't even remember that there was ever life without Kassams. One girl said that her two younger brothers never played in the park outside, because that's how they live. Another child from Kibbutz Gevim spoke longingly of a time, many years ago, when they used to play soccer outside. But now it's like a far-off dream; they live in constant fear. That is their life. Even when there are no rocket hits, the potential is there, and therefore the fear eats away all the time, and that's how they live.
"It was painful to hear this, because just as during the war in the north, there were two states - one country in which the war happened and one in which everything went on as usual (except for those who were in the reserves, of course) - and here, we have two countries. Every population sector that takes its turn at absorbing rockets is left on its own, and is not at all part of the public discourse, or is just a small part of it. I mean, after so many years of Kassams, in which this is a given reality, we should be talking about adding school hours, speeding up the reinforcing process, giving pay hikes to teachers and care-givers, adjusted matriculations exams, more teaching during leisure time, etc. But this is not at all the situation. There are not enough protected classrooms, the daily schedule changes each day, they are behind in the courses of study, the cultural centers are empty because it’s dangerous to walk there, they lose hours of sleep, and there are not enough psychologists. Childhood is simply missing, and we are most definitely not doing enough to alleviate the suffering."
Yechimovitch, whose Labor Party is a member of the coalition government, did not refrain from attacking the government from the left:
"In the end, the only thing that will bring peace and quiet to these children and to the children in Gaza is a diplomatic process that will yield results. But we don't see such a process; there is no shred of negotiations, or of diplomatic moderation, that was the general trend of the voters in the last election. Instead, we are witness to spins and machinations of 'change in government.' That's not the solution. And if this government has no social agenda, it also has no diplomatic agenda, unfortunately. As part of the coalition, I beg that we stop the political spins and return to negotiations."
MK Shai Hermesh (Kadima), a resident of the area, sharply attacked the government of which his party is a member:
"We are all responsible for this intolerable situation - the coalition and the opposition - and we are not doing what is necessary. 4,400 families in the area are living without safety rooms in their homes, and only have public shelters nearby that can be of no help when the rocket-warning alarm sounds. I submitted a plan to build these rooms, but the plan was not accepted by the government authorities. As a member of the coalition and Kadima, I say: This is governmental wantonness and abandonment of human life. It sounds grave. Yes, governmental wantonness and abandonment of human life."
Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh responded by giving an account of the reinforcing of the schools: "The work on [all] 16 elementary schools has been completed. Out of 8 high schools, three have been completed, and the rest will be completed within two weeks. 56 kindergartens are completed, another 25 will be completed within two weeks, and another 58 will be completed, to our sorrow, only by the end of February. 12 kindergartens cannot be reinforced at all, and must be rebuilt... This is a very important matter, but this is what can be done within the framework of the 150 millions shekels that were allocated."
The Knesset voted to pass the educational aspects of the matter on to the Knesset Education Committee, and the other matters on to the Knesset Finance Committee.
Excerpts:
MK Ze'ev Elkin (Kadima):
"I think that what happened in Sderot this morning is just an additional reminder of what the residents experience every morning and every day. When those metal pieces fly in the air, they kill and maim and they have power... We [MKs] met here last week with children from Sderot and we learned that there is a school that has not yet been protected against rockets. But even in schools that have supposedly been protected, I would like to ask the government and the Deputy Defense Minister [the designated government respondent for this issue - ed.] if children can learn properly in such an environment...
"The official State stance is that only some of the classrooms are protected. But then an order was given that the pupils should learn only in those rooms, and as a result, the children of Sderot and environs are learning only part of the day. They study for fewer hours than they need to meet their educational goals, even though we would rather have them learn more and spend more time in protected areas... If we can't change the security situation - though I'm not sure about that, because if you noticed, the Kassams are usually fired in the morning, and the fact that we have now stopped preventive fire in the morning may be what have cost us a woman's life today - but if we can't change that, then the government and State must at least provide normal school conditions for the children."
MK Rabbi Yitzchak Levy (National Union):
"We may have different opinions on how to stop the Kassams, but we all agree about the terrible plight of the children and residents... The panic and fear there are at its height. Until now it was the fear of the noise of the Kassam, and now it's a fear for life...
"We want to demand from the government a comprehensive plan for the children of Sderot. I can include here the day care centers, the nurseries, the schools, the high schools, the Yeshivat Hesder, the girls' seminary, the large college in Safir, and the institutions in the kibbutzim. The area is blessed with children and educational institutions...
"When we met with the children, we heard a great cry from them. We heard children say, 'Our childhood is being stolen away, we can't go outside, our parents go into a panic when we go out, we don't have after-school clubs, we can't play soccer and we can't go anywhere - because they're too scared for us to leave home.'
"...Mr. Deputy Defense Minister, I am always happy to hear you, but I am sorry that the Education Minister is not here; she is in exile [in Los Angeles] with a large part of the government. But we don't want to hear right now about the military options; our issue right now is how the children will be dealt with."
MK Ruby Rivlin (Likud):
"Last week we met here with pupils from Sderot and the Gaza-border area... and we sat opposite them, silently listening to their tribulations. A 10-year-old boy from Sderot said that he has to jump from classroom to classroom every day, because of the lack of reinforced rooms. A youth from a nearby kibbutz wondered aloud how he would be able to take matriculation exams with rockets falling around him, forcing him to quickly find refuge. We realized how hard it is these days to be a student there.
"Then at the same time, we hear that the State has decided not to reinforce any more classes; it told the Supreme Court that the schools will have shelters, protected areas, close enough for each student to run to when he hears the warning alarm... Imagine whether a student can fully concentrate on his studies when the whole time he is taut and tense for the moment he will hear the warning alarm and will have to run for his life? What about a child who can't run so fast or who might fall down in the rush? Solutions like this are a mockery of education and teachers..."
MK Shelly Yechimovitch (Labor):
"In our meeting with the children, we saw that most of them don't even remember that there was ever life without Kassams. One girl said that her two younger brothers never played in the park outside, because that's how they live. Another child from Kibbutz Gevim spoke longingly of a time, many years ago, when they used to play soccer outside. But now it's like a far-off dream; they live in constant fear. That is their life. Even when there are no rocket hits, the potential is there, and therefore the fear eats away all the time, and that's how they live.
"It was painful to hear this, because just as during the war in the north, there were two states - one country in which the war happened and one in which everything went on as usual (except for those who were in the reserves, of course) - and here, we have two countries. Every population sector that takes its turn at absorbing rockets is left on its own, and is not at all part of the public discourse, or is just a small part of it. I mean, after so many years of Kassams, in which this is a given reality, we should be talking about adding school hours, speeding up the reinforcing process, giving pay hikes to teachers and care-givers, adjusted matriculations exams, more teaching during leisure time, etc. But this is not at all the situation. There are not enough protected classrooms, the daily schedule changes each day, they are behind in the courses of study, the cultural centers are empty because it’s dangerous to walk there, they lose hours of sleep, and there are not enough psychologists. Childhood is simply missing, and we are most definitely not doing enough to alleviate the suffering."
Yechimovitch, whose Labor Party is a member of the coalition government, did not refrain from attacking the government from the left:
"In the end, the only thing that will bring peace and quiet to these children and to the children in Gaza is a diplomatic process that will yield results. But we don't see such a process; there is no shred of negotiations, or of diplomatic moderation, that was the general trend of the voters in the last election. Instead, we are witness to spins and machinations of 'change in government.' That's not the solution. And if this government has no social agenda, it also has no diplomatic agenda, unfortunately. As part of the coalition, I beg that we stop the political spins and return to negotiations."
MK Shai Hermesh (Kadima), a resident of the area, sharply attacked the government of which his party is a member:
"We are all responsible for this intolerable situation - the coalition and the opposition - and we are not doing what is necessary. 4,400 families in the area are living without safety rooms in their homes, and only have public shelters nearby that can be of no help when the rocket-warning alarm sounds. I submitted a plan to build these rooms, but the plan was not accepted by the government authorities. As a member of the coalition and Kadima, I say: This is governmental wantonness and abandonment of human life. It sounds grave. Yes, governmental wantonness and abandonment of human life."
Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh responded by giving an account of the reinforcing of the schools: "The work on [all] 16 elementary schools has been completed. Out of 8 high schools, three have been completed, and the rest will be completed within two weeks. 56 kindergartens are completed, another 25 will be completed within two weeks, and another 58 will be completed, to our sorrow, only by the end of February. 12 kindergartens cannot be reinforced at all, and must be rebuilt... This is a very important matter, but this is what can be done within the framework of the 150 millions shekels that were allocated."
The Knesset voted to pass the educational aspects of the matter on to the Knesset Education Committee, and the other matters on to the Knesset Finance Committee.