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The closure orders come after Israel banned UNRWA from operating
on its soil earlier this year, the culmination of a long
campaign against the agency that intensified following the Oct.
7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel that ignited the war in Gaza.
Israel claims that UNRWA schools teach antisemitic content and
anti-Israel sentiment, which UNRWA denies.
UNRWA is the main provider of education and health care to
Palestinian refugees across east Jerusalem, which Israel
captured in the 1967 Mideast war. Israel has annexed east
Jerusalem and considers the entire city its unified capital.
“When I said goodbye to the teachers, and when I went to hug the
teachers, I started crying because I don’t know which school I
will go to, and where we will study," said Layan Ramadan Nataheh,
a student at Shufat Basic Girls School, one of the UNRWA schools
ordered shut.
"The presence of soldiers inside a school scares the girls, and
the decision to close the school has affected their spirits and
their future because they have nowhere to go,” said Shujan Abu
Remailah, a resident of the Shufat refugee camp.
The Israeli Ministry of Education says it will place the
students into other Jerusalem schools. But parents, teachers and
administrators caution that closing the main schools in east
Jerusalem will force their children to go through crowded and
dangerous checkpoints daily, and some do not have the correct
permits to pass through.
In a previous statement to The Associated Press, the Ministry of
Education said it was closing the schools because they were
operating without a license. UNRWA administrators pledged to
keep the schools open for as long as possible.
Farhan Haq, the U.N. deputy spokesperson, on Thursday stressed
the “inviolability” of U.N. facilities, quoting the statement
from Philippe Lazzarini, the UNRWA Commissioner-General, saying
that “storming schools and forcing them shut is a blatant
disregard of international law.”
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