The Israeli armed security forces have forced the closure of three schools led by the United Nations Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) in Israeli East Jerusalem.
Hundreds of Palestinian students were sent home schools from the Shuafat refugee camp just after the start of the lessons on Thursday morning.
Commissioner General of UNRWA, Philippe Lazzarini, said that the Israeli authorities refused children their fundamental right to learn them and the accused of “flagrant contempt for international law”.
An Israeli ban on UNRWA came into force earlier this year and Israel accuses the agency of being infiltrated by Hamas. UNRWA denies this assertion and insists on its impartiality.
Videos have shown that uniform girls are shaking outside a school in Shuafat after the arrival of Israeli forces outside.
A fence order fixed to the school wall said: “It will be prohibited to operate educational establishments or employ teachers, teaching staff or any other staff, and it will be prohibited to welcome students or authorize the entry of students into this establishment.”
UNRWA said more than 550 students aged six to 15 were present and that one of its staff was detained, in what its director of the occupied West Bank described “a trauma experience for young children who can immediately lose their access to education”.
The agency said Israeli police were also deployed in three other schools in East Jerusalem, also forcing them to send their students home.
“Stormage of schools and forcing them to close is a blatant contempt for international law,” wrote Philippe Lazzarini on X. “These schools are inviolable premises of the United Nations.”
He added: “By applying the closure orders issued last month, the Israeli authorities deny Palestinian children their basic right to learn.
“UNRWA schools must continue to be opened to protect a whole generation of children.”
The Palestinian Authority, which governs parts of the West Bank not under Israeli control, said that this decision was a “violation of children’s right to education”.
The British consulate in Jerusalem said that the United Kingdom, EU, Norway, Switzerland, Turkey and Japan have firmly opposed to the closing orders issued against UNRWA schools and have been held “in solidarity with students, parents and teachers”.
“UNRWA operates in Jerusalem-East under its mandate of the United Nations General Assembly since 1950. Israel is obliged under international humanitarian law to facilitate the proper functioning of all the institutions devoted to the education of children,” they added.
Last year, the Israeli Parliament adopted laws prohibiting contacts between Israeli officials and UNRWA, as well as the ban on the activity of the Israeli territory agency.
Israel captured Jerusalem-Est, as well as the rest of the West Bank, in the War of the Middle East of 1967.
He actually annexed Jerusalem-Est in 1980 in a decision not recognized by most of the international community, and considers the whole city as its capital.
The Palestinians consider Jerusalem-Est as the capital of their future hoped for.
About 230,000 Israeli settlers are currently living in East Jerusalem alongside 390,000 Palestinians.
Most of the international community considers that the colonies built there and elsewhere in the West Bank are illegal under international law – a position supported by an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) last year – although Israel disputes it.
