Israel moves to shutter West Bank school

Teaching Islamic extremism?  
At the boarding school, students get a free education, hot meals, food coupons for their families and transportation home every weekend. The charity also runs schools and nurseries for 6,400 day students, about half of whom study for free.

Israel accuses the association of teaching children Islamic extremism and of financing violence.

"Hamas invests a lot into the education of children ... to teach them extremism ... and recruit them to terror acts. The system is clear-cut, it's meant to finance that," said Maj. Avital Leibowich, an army spokesman.

Association staff say they aren't a Hamas front. They say that the association was founded in 1962, five years before Israel captured the West Bank, and that it registered first with Israel's military government and later with the Palestinian Authority.

The charity has assets valued at about $10 million, including a cattle farm, apartments, bakeries and commercial real estate, said Farah, the lawyer. It receives millions of dollars from donors in Persian Gulf states to help cover monthly costs of $635,000.

Farah said Israeli security forces have confiscated thousands of dollars worth of association property.

A clear Islamic bent
Hamas officials deny direct involvement in the charity, though they say they support its work.

The association's schools teach four Islamic lessons a week, the same as Palestinian state schools. But there is a clear Islamic bent in the boarding school. On a recent afternoon, a social worker in a robe and Muslim head scarf ushered giggling girls into pink-painted rooms to prayer.

Amal Abu Habdiyeh, 11, has lived in the boarding school since her father died five years ago. She said she would feel out of place elsewhere. "If I go to a public school, there'll be no orphans, and the children will talk about their happy homes," she said.

The boarding school has received outside help.

Christian group helps out
Volunteers from Christian Peacemakers, a group of American and Canadian pacifists who work in conflict zones, sleep in the dormitory in shifts in hopes of deterring the army from shutting the facility.

"We are convinced there is no connection between the charity and Hamas," said Art Arbour, a 65-year-old retired school principal from Canada.

The children and the women who rely on the association are clearly worried.

Shatat said that without the boarding school, her daughters would be married off once they reach their late teens — simply because she could not afford to educate them.

"If my girls were to come home, I'd be happy, but it would be a big burden for me. I can't provide for them the way they do here," she said.

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