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In Mideast, a Growing Linguistic Divide
Mazen Abu Shamsiya, who runs a Hebrew language institute in the West Bank city of Hebron, said most of his students are Palestinian merchants who do business in Israel.
(Scott Wilson - Twp)
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Last month, Israel's parliament voted to establish the state's first Arabic academy to promote the language.
Ulpan Akiva, a language school that occupies a seaside compound in Netanya, is the first stop for many new Jewish immigrants seeking to learn Hebrew.
Before the uprising and Israel's construction of a separation barrier, scores of Palestinians also studied Hebrew there each year, including a Hamas spokesman who uses the language in Israeli television interviews. Today, two West Bank doctors are the only Palestinians in the course.
The school also offers Arabic, which once attracted Israelis from a variety of political and professional backgrounds, including Jewish settlers from the West Bank. Most Jewish adults now enrolled in its Arabic courses work for the government as teachers, police and military officers.
"It's the wall, it's anger, it's fear," said Esther Perron, the institute's ebullient director. "But whatever happens, they will be here and we will be here. So let's talk."
Yasser Khatib, director of the Palestinian Yasser Cultural Center in Hebron, learned Hebrew at Ulpan Akiva in better days. Now he runs his own language institute.
The school's Hebrew teacher learned the language in an Israeli prison, where many Palestinian political leaders jailed during the uprisings learned it from fellow inmates.
Before the most recent uprising, Khatib said, hundreds of Palestinians were enrolled in his three-month Hebrew courses. "Now," he said, "you can count them on one hand."
On the eve of that uprising, which began in September 2000, the Israeli government allowed 100,000 Palestinians from the West Bank to work and trade in Israel. Now that number is 50,000, among them a satellite dish salesman, two cut-stone merchants and a traveling toy vendor studying in Abu Shamsiya's second-floor classroom in Hebron.
A female medical student fields Abu Shamsiya's questions, hoping Hebrew will help her secure a gynecology residency at Jerusalem's prestigious Hadassah Hospital. Then there is Hanadi Tahaboub, a 32-year-old homemaker wearing a pink head scarf.
"When I am at checkpoints and I hear Israeli soldiers talking among themselves, I feel like an illiterate," Tahaboub said. "Now at least I will know what they are saying."
Special correspondent Samuel Sockol contributed to this report.
