GAZA CITY, September 3, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – After 38 years of living under the yoke of the Israeli occupation, Palestinians celebrated Saturday, September 3, the first occupation-free school year.

"I'm very happy. Before, every day there was shooting. It was hard to get home after school, and I would be afraid when I was doing my homework," Naher Spier, 14, told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

The student, who lived close to the Morag Jewish settlement outside the southern Gaza Strip town of Khan Yunis, often found the road blocked to school by Israeli forces.

Enjoying the freedom breeze, thirteen-year-old Abdul Raham Al-Astal recalled the bad old days of the Israeli occupation.

"Sometimes, the Israelis started shelling and I was too frightened to sleep," he said.

Under the occupation, schools could unexpectedly close down because of an Israeli army offensive.

Despite the overwhelming jubilation at the liberation of their land, the Israeli occupation left Palestinian students psychologically scarred.

Al-Astal wants to be an artist and likes to draw pictures of Israeli forces killing Palestinians.

Wearing their blue school uniforms, students crowded dusty playgrounds from Gaza City to its southern border, rejoicing at the Israeli withdrawal which, to them, means an end to daily military raids that made their student days a nightmare.

One million Palestinian pupils returned to schools across the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip after a hot summer.

The Israeli pullout from the impoverished Mediterranean coastal strip, which included the evacuation of all 21 red-roofed Jewish settlements, ended on Tuesday, August 23.

"You paid a heavy price. We appreciate your sacrifice," Abbas told students and teachers.

Mindful of the recent past, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas greeted students Saturday morning at Gaza City's Palestine secondary school, promising them a brighter future.

"The Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip will be good for all students. There will be no more obstacles, no more checkpoints," he told students and teachers outside the building.

"Students will be able to travel freely. The shelling is finished. The elderly will be able to live in peace.

"You paid a heavy price. We appreciate your sacrifice."

In remarks published Saturday, Abbas stressed that several border crossings were built by Israel on Gaza land and should be moved as part of the pullout.

"There are lands in eastern and northern Gaza (such as Karni and Erez border crossings -A.R) still under occupation," he said in an interview published Saturday in the Palestinian daily Al Quds.

"We need to renegotiate the details and get back to the real border," Abbas said, referring to the 1967 frontier.

Palestinian schools and pupils were a favorite target of incessant Israeli raids and attacks.

For school students, it is hard to think of a year where tragedy did not penetrate their classroom, or when students did not know a friend, relative or even a teacher killed by Israeli gunfire.

A 10-year-old Palestinian schoolgirl died of her wounds in October 2004 after Israeli snipers shot her in the chest while she was sitting inside a UN-run school in a Gaza refugee camp.

UNRWA said it was the fourth shooting of a student at one of its schools in Gaza in the past two years.

Iman was left lying in a pool of blood because ambulances had been denied access.