Yassir Arafat is 100% at fault for not leading his people out of the darkness they are presently in.
You are so right...Case in point:
Arafat offers moon
theglobeandmail.com
Told he could study anywhere, student now has little hope of attending classes
Photo: Mohammed Ballas/The Globe and Mail
Abdel Nasser Zayid, 18, scored first among 17,000 Palestinian students on his high-school exams.
By PAUL ADAMS
From Saturday's Globe and Mail
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AL YAMOUN, WEST BANK — Abdel Nasser Zayid may not be starting university this fall, and that's a shame. September should have been the most exciting time in the life of the shy, studious 18-year-old, who scored first among 17,000 Palestinian science students on his high-school exams in the spring.
Instead, it is a time of anxiety, confusion and disappointment.
This year, Mr. Zayid earned an astonishing 99.3-per-cent average in the tawjihi, a set of comprehensive exams covering subjects including math, physics, biology, Arabic and English.
"I expected to be in the Top 10, but I didn't think I'd be at the top," the soft-spoken Mr Zayid said, sitting in his family's living room surrounded by proud relatives. "That was a shock, a happy shock."
Not surprisingly, after the exam results were announced, Mr. Zayid became a minor celebrity in the West Bank. There were celebrations in his hometown. His name was broadcast on radio across the Palestinian territories and his picture was printed in Arabic-language newspapers. When he met Yasser Arafat, the president of the Palestinian Authority promised Mr. Zayid that he could rely on the government to send him anywhere in the world to study whatever he would like.
Meeting with Mr. Arafat was a highlight for Mr. Zayid, if only because from then on, his academic prospects have been rolling downhill. Mr. Zayid, the youngest of 12 children, wants to follow in the footsteps of one of his older brothers, Muhanad, who has just graduated from a university in Germany, where he studied medicine.
"I grew up to hear this every day: Study and you'll be a doctor," Mr. Zayid said. "A doctor has a respectable position in society. He gets the praise of God and his neighbours."
When Palestinian officials contacted him to make good on Mr. Arafat's promise, however, Mr. Zayid said they told him he would not be sent to Germany. Rather he would have to choose from a list of countries including Turkey, Greece, Jordan and Morocco.
Later, he was told the options had narrowed again. It was the University of Jordan or nothing.
Then, astonishingly, he received a phone call telling him he would have to enter a lottery with two top students from the Gaza Strip for the available places at the University of Jordan. He lost.
The consolation prize was an offer to study at the military college at Muata, in rural Jordan.
"I was shocked," he said. "It was hard enough to accept that I might be going to the University of Jordan. Now, here I am at the very bottom."
Mr. Zayid's top marks were all the more remarkable because he comes from the village of Al Yamoun, near Jenin, a city whose name has become almost synonymous with bitter fighting in the three years since the Palestinian uprising began.
The steel doors on the small greengrocer's shop run by Mr. Zayid's mother, Fatima, testify to the violence: They are peppered with indentations from Israeli bullets fired during military incursions last year.
But while other kids were throwing bricks or considering suicide attacks, Mr. Zayid was hitting the books, despite frequent school closings.
"There were tanks in front of the school," he recalled. "The soldiers were raiding the houses. They arrested boys from my own class during exams. . . . It disrupted my schooling, but I had to concentrate on what was important to me."
Mr. Zayid is careful not to criticize his more militant classmates. He said, however, that he believes education will be the salvation of the Palestinian people. He even called his studies a form of "martyrdom."
It is, however, undeniably a more life-affirming form of sacrifice than others have chosen.
If Mr. Zayid achieves his dream of studying medicine, it will be due more to his family than to the Palestinian Authority. Although his mother has only a Grade 4 education and his father completed only high school, all but one of his 11 siblings have gone to university.
His parents were unrelenting in their promotion of education for their children -- including the girls, something that attracted unfavourable comment from some neighbours. "We have nothing, we Palestinians," said Mr. Zayid's father, Hassan, "so education is our only way out."
The family lobbied frantically on Mr. Zayid's behalf with Mr. Arafat's office, the local governor and the Palestinian department of education, but to no avail.
In an interview, the assistant deputy minister of education in the Palestinian government, Hisham Kuhail, defended the lottery, saying it was the only fair way to distribute the limited number of university seats available to the impoverished Palestinian Authority. He hinted broadly that he believed Mr. Zayid was reluctant to take the place offered to him at Muata because he preferred the "bright lights" of the Jordanian capital, Amman, where the University of Jordan is located.
However, after being contacted by The Globe and Mail, Mr. Kuhail suggested some possibilities that apparently had not been communicated to Mr. Zayid. He said that the "case is not closed -- it is still under consideration." More specifically, he said that within days a government committee likely would approve a living allowance for Mr. Zayid if he went to a German university.
When Mr. Kuhail was contacted a week later, he took a new tack, saying he was working on opening up another place at the University of Jordan for Mr. Zayid.
It has left the brilliant young scholar deflated and uncertain of his future. He certainly does not expect to sit in a university class this year.
"I feel I will not attend any university. Now I will start again from scratch and see where I can get on my own." |
