Joy and Concern as Pupils Return to School in Mosul

File photo: An Iraqi boy sits at a desk at a school in Mosul. Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP
File photo: An Iraqi boy sits at a desk at a school in Mosul. Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP
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Joy and Concern as Pupils Return to School in Mosul

File photo: An Iraqi boy sits at a desk at a school in Mosul. Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP
File photo: An Iraqi boy sits at a desk at a school in Mosul. Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP

After three years of forced truancy due to ISIS’ seizure of the Iraqi city of Mosul, teenager Ali Salem waited nervously outside school to sit an English exam.

Before heading out bright and early from a camp for the displaced in Hajj Ali, 60 kilometers away, he had had a last look over lessons that were interrupted in 2014.

"On the evening of June 10, 2014, we heard that ISIS had taken over the city. I had a maths exam the next day but school stopped," Salem told Agence France Presse in front of the gate of the school in west Mosul's Mansour district.

"I'm 18 now and I've lost three years because of ISIS. I'm so glad we're back at school to be able to pass exams because all this will determine the course of my life," he said, with disheveled hair and a schoolbag strapped across his shoulder.

Because of the disruption for the 300,000 pupils in Niniveh province of which Mosul is the capital, the education ministry has decided to set IQ tests for primary schools and general knowledge exams in secondary.

A block of houses away, also in the Mansour district, next to a building toppled by an air strike, another pupil was waiting anxiously to take the same English exam.

"I've forgotten everything, and I've only managed to get a photocopy of one chapter whereas they can question me on the whole book," fretted Mahmud Abdel Nafaa, also 18, as workmen laboured to fix drains and pavements smashed by shelling.

"I'm really happy to be back at school but also worried because if I fail the exams I will be transferred to evening classes," said the young man in a red T-shirt and with black slicked-back hair.

Abdel Nafaa said evening classes were held only twice a week, and they have become mandatory for pupils deemed too old to follow the syllabus.

The new academic year started in early October in the eastern part of the city, from where Iraqi security forces expelled ISIS militants in January.

But classes and exams will not resume in earnest until the start of November in west Mosul, where the battle dragged on until July.

Mosul's education system, with its pre-war tally of 600 schools, has paid a high price for the months-long fight.

Only 210 schools are left standing on the east bank of the Tigris river that runs through the city, and 100 on its west bank.

In his office building with its completely burnt-out ground floor, the director general of the education ministry for Niniveh province faces a mammoth task.

"We're the second line after the armed forces. They liberate, and we have to rehabilitate right after," Wahid Abdel Qader said.

"Already back in January, when the east had barely been liberated, we noted that families were eager for school to restart," he said.

But with bombardments rocking the west, schools in the east waited until May and June to gradually restore classes.

Mohammed Ismail, headmaster of the Zubayda school in east Mosul, said he languished at home for three years.

"In our district, only one school stayed open," under ISIS supervision, he said. 

"Some of my colleagues worked with them,” he said, adding most of the pupils under ISIS were French, Russian and Chechen children of foreign militants.

In the playground of the Zeitoun school overlooking the east bank of the Tigris, six-year-old Yussef Razwan showed off his first reading book. 

"Playing at home is boring. I prefer being here," the little boy in white uniform beamed.



Israel's Bedouin Communities Use Solar Energy to Stake Claim to Land

This aerial view shows solar panels at an electricity-generation plant for the Bedouin community in the village of Tirabin al-Sana in Israel's southern Negev desert Photo: Menahem KAHANA
This aerial view shows solar panels at an electricity-generation plant for the Bedouin community in the village of Tirabin al-Sana in Israel's southern Negev desert Photo: Menahem KAHANA
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Israel's Bedouin Communities Use Solar Energy to Stake Claim to Land

This aerial view shows solar panels at an electricity-generation plant for the Bedouin community in the village of Tirabin al-Sana in Israel's southern Negev desert Photo: Menahem KAHANA
This aerial view shows solar panels at an electricity-generation plant for the Bedouin community in the village of Tirabin al-Sana in Israel's southern Negev desert Photo: Menahem KAHANA

At the end of a dusty road in southern Israel, beyond a Bedouin village of unfinished houses and the shiny dome of a mosque, a field of solar panels gleams in the hot desert sun.

Tirabin al-Sana in Israel's Negev desert is the home of the Tirabin (also spelled Tarabin) Bedouin tribe, who signed a contract with an Israeli solar energy company to build the installation.

The deal has helped provide jobs for the community as well as promote cleaner, cheaper energy for the country, as the power produced is pumped into the national grid.

Earlier this month, the Al-Ghanami family in the town of Abu Krinat a little further south inaugurated a similar field of solar panels.
Bedouin families have for years tried and failed to hold on to their lands, coming up against right-wing groups and hardline government officials.

Demolition orders issued by Israeli authorities plague Bedouin villages, threatening the traditionally semi-nomadic communities with forced eviction.

But Yosef Abramowitz, co-chair of the non-profit organisation Shamsuna, said solar field projects help them to stake a more definitive claim.
"It secures their land rights forever," he told AFP.

"It's the only way to settle the Bedouin land issue and secure 100 percent renewable energy," he added, calling it a "win, win".

For the solar panels to be built, the land must be registered as part of the Bedouin village, strengthening their claim over it.

Roughly 300,000 Bedouins live in the Negev desert, half of them in places such as Tirabin al-Sana, including some 110,000 who reside in villages not officially recognised by the government.

This aerial view shows solar panels at an electricity-generation plant for the Bedouin community in the village of Tirabin al-Sana in Israel's southern Negev desert
This aerial view shows solar panels at an electricity-generation plant for the Bedouin community in the village of Tirabin al-Sana in Israel's southern Negev desert Photo: Menahem KAHANA
Villages that are not formally recognied are fighting the biggest battle to stay on the land.

Far-right groups, some backed by the current government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have stepped up efforts in the past two years to drive these families away.
A sharp increase in home demolitions has left the communities vulnerable and whole families without a roof over their heads.

"Since 2023, more than 8,500 buildings have been demolished in these unrecognized villages," Marwan Abu Frieh, from the legal aid organization Adalah, told AFP at a recent protest in Beersheva, the largest city in the Negev.

"Within these villages, thousands of families are now living out in the open, an escalation the Negev has not witnessed in perhaps the last two decades."

Tribes just want to "live in peace and dignity", following their distinct customs and traditions, he said.

Gil Yasur, who also works with Shamsuna developing critical infrastructure in Bedouin villages, said land claims issues were common among Bedouins across the Negev.
Families who include a solar project on their land, however, stand a better chance of securing it, he added.

"Then everyone will benefit -- the landowners, the country, the Negev," he said. "This is the best way to move forward to a green economy."

In Um Batin, a recognised village, residents are using solar energy in a different way –- to power a local kindergarten all year round.

Until last year, the village relied on power from a diesel generator that polluted the air and the ground where the children played.

Now, a hulking solar panel shields the children from the sun as its surface sucks up the powerful rays, keeping the kindergarten in full working order.

"It was not clean or comfortable here before," said Nama Abu Kaf, who works in the kindergarten.
"Now we have air conditioning and a projector so the children can watch television."

Hani al-Hawashleh, who oversees the project on behalf of Shamsuna, said the solar energy initiative for schools and kindergartens was "very positive".

"Without power you can't use all kinds of equipment such as projectors, lights in the classrooms and, on the other hand, it saves costs and uses clean energy," he said.

The projects are part of a pilot scheme run by Shamsuna.

Asked if there was interest in expanding to other educational institutions that rely on polluting generators, he said there were challenges and bureaucracy but he hoped to see more.

"We need people to collaborate with us to move this forward," he said, adding that he would "love to see a solar energy system in every village".