Secret Hebron: The School Run
Donna Baillie
Documentary | Palestine | 2004 | 28 min.
All children have the right to a formal education. This fundamental premise, affirmed by the United Nations, becomes a bitter casualty of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Donna Baillie?s dispiriting documentary. When Hebron?s H2 district is put under extended curfew, no Palestinian is allowed on the streets, and youth miss weeks of school. In response, the children of Hebron do what children do?they adapt. Baillie infuses incisive investigative reporting with staggering imagery of three- and four-year-old students traversing fourth-floor rooftops on wooden planks as they evade the Israeli security forces. When the children are able to navigate the labyrinth of back alleys and secret passageways that allow them to infiltrate their own schools, they face disrupted schedules, overcrowding, and limited recreation.
Secret Hebron is punctuated with children?s candid statements, and statistics on youth conditions in Hebron ranging from sobering to the absurd. Local policy and international law entwine in an intractable mess ? and a generation of undereducated Palestinian children hangs in the balance. Whatever your perspective on the conflict, one fact is inescapable: the children of Hebron suffer.
