TEL AVIV: Like many other imprisoned Palestinian teenagers released as part of an exchange deal with Israel, Mohamed al-Salaymeh hoped to regain a semblance of normality after months in detention.
But he found himself in limbo yet again, unable to go back to school due to a new Israeli Education Ministry decision. The ruling bans students in annexed east Jerusalem from resuming classes after imprisonment.
"My dream is to return and for this gate to be opened," said Mohamed, 16, standing in front of his school in his east Jerusalem neighbourhood of Ras al-Amoud.
Israel last month agreed to a temporary truce deal that saw the release of 80 Israeli hostages held by Hamas in exchange for 240 Palestinians detained in Israeli prisons.
All those released on both sides were women and minors.
Hamas seized about 250 hostages on Oct 7 when it broke through the militarised border of the Gaza Strip for an unprecedented attack that killed 1,139 people in southern Israel, according to Israeli figures.
In retaliation, Israel vowed to destroy Hamas and began a relentless bombardment of Gaza, alongside a ground invasion, that has killed 18,800 people, according to Gaza's Hamas government.
Israel occupied east Jerusalem during a 1967 war with Arab states, and later annexed it in a move never recognised by the international community.
Around 230,000 Israelis now live in the territory, alongside at least 360,000 Palestinians who want to make the city's eastern sector the capital of their future state.
Mohamed was arrested alongside three of his cousins, Moataz, 15, and brothers Ahmed, 14, and Ayham, 13. Ayham was later placed under house arrest, where he remains.
The others spent about four months in an Israel prison accused — but never formally charged — of throwing rocks at a Jewish settlement near their Jerusalem neighbourhood.
"Where will I go? There is nowhere. I will stay at home. I can't work because I'm under 18," said Ahmed, the youngest of the Palestinians freed under the deal.
Moataz said he feared "losing my education. If things remain this way, I will have to repeat a year."
But Mohamed appears the hardest hit by the decision, as he was expecting to graduate next year.
"God only knows when we will return. I want to achieve my dreams," he told AFP.
The Israeli ministry's decision affects 48 of the minors released in the hostage-prisoner deal.
The ministry told AFP that the teens' status would be reevaluated after the end of winter holidays on Jan 10.
Jerusalem municipality, responsible for implementing the decision, told AFP it was "assessing and examining the pedagogical and emotional needs of each and every student, and building individual educational programmes aiming to prevent the recurrence of unlawful acts in the future".
On Tuesday, municipal officials summoned Ahmed's father, Nayef al-Salaymeh.
The officials "suggested that they be moved to other schools and institutions according to vague criteria," said Salaymeh, whose son hopes to become a lawyer.
"We refused to move them because they all grew up in this school in our neighbourhood," the father said, clad in a traditional Palestinian keffiyeh chequered scarf.
"If this decision becomes effective... we will see young people in the streets with no future," he continued. "They destroy their thoughts and ambitions, to turn us into a backwards people."
Nayef al-Salaymeh said civil society groups are helping the family continue its "struggle to return our children to their classrooms."
Unlike the Salaymehs, Amin al-Abbasi, 17, opted to move to a school run in east Jerusalem by the Palestinian Authority, which has partial administrative control in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
He said he decided "not to lose the year", but fears he won't be able to adapt to the new school in Sur Bahr and is trying to convince his former cellmates to join him.
His mother, Abir, complained that the school is "very far from all public transportation."
Amin was serving a 20-month sentence for involvement in clashes in his neighbourhood of Silwan, adjacent to Jerusalem's walled Old City, where tensions previously flared between Palestinian residents and Jewish settlers.
He served 13 months before the exchange deal freed him.
Khaled Zabarqa, a lawyer who has examined such cases but does not officially represent any of the minors, said the ministry ban on ex-prisoners returning to school contravenes Israel's law on mandatory education.
"Education as a human right should not be subject to political considerations," he said.
Tal Hassin, from the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, said many of the students "have not been convicted. They are just suspects".
She said the association was awaiting the end of the holidays to see what official decisions come next, and what legal avenues might be pursued.
Until then, Mohamed clings to the hope of returning to school.
"My education is my only weapon," he said. --AFP