Sderot Parents Must Take Regime to Court to Compel Governmental Responsibility

Why Do Parents Have to Sue for Government Protection? by Noam Bedein (Israel National News)

For context, click here and here.

“Giladi stated that the Israeli government should not protect school children after third grade, since the Israel Civil Defense Command had determined that children had a 15-second warning from the time the siren sounds until the missile hits.”

“Civil Defense official Michel Levy responded once again that ‘full protection is not necessary. We are working on the concept of safe areas in the schools.'”

Full Text;

Southern schools are only partially protected.

Court room gimel of the Israel High Court of Justice provided a surreal scene one day this month, when three parents from the Sderot Parents Association petitioned the court for an order compelling the government of Israel to provide full protection for all 24 educational institutions in the city of Sderot. Joining in the suit was the legal counsel of the western Negev’s Shaar HaNegev Regional Council.

Following more than 1,300 missile attacks on Sderot and the western Negev since the Disengagement in 2005, the surprising policy of the Israeli government is to leave the area’s schools only partially protected.

Indeed, during the one hour that the court met in special session, Arabs fired three more missiles at populated areas of the western Negev. And the British foreign secretary, on a special visit to Israel, praised the Israeli government for its restraint in the wake of more than 100 missile attacks on Israeli population centers since Israel declared a unilateral cease fire on November 26, 2006.

While missile attacks continue unabated, the Israeli Civil Defense Command submitted a report to the court that it had decided to provide the proper protection only for the first, second and third grades of the schools in Sderot and in the Western Negev; thus, leaving other grades unprotected.

In court, the young lawyer who appeared on behalf of the Israeli government, Raanan Giladi, stated that the Israeli government should not protect school children after third grade, since the Israel Civil Defense Command had determined that children had a 15-second warning from the time the siren sounds until the missile hits, during which they can run for cover in the safe areas of the school. Following Giladi’s defense of this limited government protection policy, an official of the Israel Civil Defense Command, Michel Levy, testified that they had carried out “trial runs” and that they had, in fact, determined that 15 seconds was enough time for the children to take cover.

Levy “forgot” to mention that in these trial runs, it was Israeli combat soldiers who had run to safe areas in the schools in 15 seconds. They did not carry out a trial run with 30 or 40 children who would have to scramble out of their chairs in their classrooms and run out of the one classroom door in search of a safe spot.

One of the Sderot parents, Alon Davidi, told the court that that he and his wife, as parents of five children in the Sderot schools, wanted to have minimal confidence that when he sent off his kids to school in the morning, they were going to classrooms that were safe – no matter how old his children are.

Judge Dorit Beinish, Chief Justice of the Israeli Supreme Court, presided at this special session of the High Court of Justice. She stated that the government’s argument was not convincing and asked how long would it take to provide a program to protect all of the schools.

Giladi asked for 45 days to provide a proposal in this regard, the parents association asked why this would take so long. Beinish gave the two sides two weeks in which to meet and to discuss a formula for full protection of the schools. To this, Civil Defense official Michel Levy responded once again that “full protection is not necessary. We are working on the concept of safe areas in the schools.”

Beinish concluded the court hearing with an unusual appeal to the government of Israel – to reconsider its policy of not providing full protection to the school children of Sderot and the Western Negev. Judge Beinish asked that the Sderot Parents Association use the next two weeks to provide the government with a precise list of what schools and what classrooms still need protection.

Meanwhile, two other representatives of the Sderot Parents Association – Batya Kedar and Chava Gad – were interviewed by the legal affairs correspondent of the Voice of Israel radio network. Kedar and Gad took their message to the people. Kedar and Gad spoke as “mothers of children under fire,” and asked that people demand that the Israeli government provide minimum protection for their children.

It will be instructive to see if the Civil Defense Command, which remains firm in its opposition to providing any further protection for the schools, will be overruled.

Asked for comment on the Israeli government policy to encourage children over the age of eight to run for cover in 15 seconds during an impending missile attack, the head of the Israel Council for the Protection of the Child, Dr. Yitzkak Kadman, wrote that “it is admirable that the Israeli government wants to institute a new physical education curriculum, to see how fast children can run. Perhaps, this new curriculum should not be instituted during missile attacks on Sderot.”