ISRAELI SOLDIERS RAID, SHUT DOWN PALESTINIAN SCHOOL AT GUNPOINT

Nablus, 15 Rabi’ul Akhir 1436/5 February 2015 (MINA)–  Israeli forces raided a Palestinian high school in the northern West Bank on Wednesday morning, storming the facility and forcing students to leave at gunpoint while detaining school administrators.

Ghassan Daghlas, a Palestinian official who monitors Israeli settlement-related activities, told Ma’an that the incident occurred near the villages of al-Lubban and al-Sawiya south of Nablus, both of which are served by the school.

Daghlas said that several Israeli military vehicles stormed the high school and forced the students to flee as they detained the school principal and his assistant, Ma’an News Agency quoted by Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA) as reporting.

Daghlas said that the soldiers interrogated the two school administrators and claimed that students from the school had hurled stones at vehicles driven by Israeli settlers on the main road between Nablus and Ramallah.

An Israeli military spokeswoman said that “teenagers were hurling rocks at the roads” and soldiers entered the school as a result in order to “tell them to stop.”

Following the incursion, “they stood outside to ensure they didn’t throw any more rocks,” she added.

In March of last year, Israeli forces also raided the school and forced it to shut down on a similar pretext.

The villages of al-Lubban and al-Sawiya are located directly alongside the main road and are almost completed surrounded by a ring of Jewish-only settlements built on land confiscated from local villages.

The villages are frequently targeted by settlers and the Israeli soldiers that guard them, and the attacks are rarely stopped or punished by authorities. (T/P010/R04)

Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA)