Israel Targets UNRWA schools in occupied East Jerusalem

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — "Israel must immediately reopen UNRWA-run schools and restore access for Palestinian refugees to UNRWA services in the West Bank", MP Sarah Champion,  Chair of the International Development Committee in the British Parliament said.

The Chair of the Committee, , has written to UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy on 9 May , about the continued Israeli harassment and undermining of UNRWA and that Israeli armed guards forced UNRWA into closing three schools that it operates across East Jerusalem and another three within the Shu’fat refugee camp.

On 8 May, heavily armed Israeli Forces stormed three UNRWA schools in Shu’fat Camp in occupied East Jerusalem, enforcing the illegal closure orders issued on 8 April 2025, forcing over 550 children out of their schools. The Israeli Security Forces harassed UNRWA teachers and detained one UNRWA staff member, ordering them to dismiss the students.

As a result, UNRWA was forced to evacuate all children across the six schools it runs in East Jerusalem.

UNRWA, runs a range of critical services for Palestinians in East Jerusalem, the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Since the 1950s, UNRWA has run schools and medical clinics in East Jerusalem, which Israel seized during the Arab-Israeli war of 1967.

The agency is the second biggest provider of education in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) after the Palestinian Authority (PA), operating 96 schools in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and serving nearly 50,000 students from the first to the ninth grades.

"These closures represent simply the latest in a long line of actions intended to undermine the work of UNRWA across the Occupied Palestinian Territory," she wrote.

"UNRWA also operates health centres across East Jerusalem that meet the needs of 40,000 citizens. We have no guarantees that these will not be the next targets of the Government of Israel." Sarah said.

"Access to education is a basic human right. Removing that right by force is not only traumatic for the children who will lose out on vital learning; it demonstrates that the Government of Israel appears prepared to commit serious breaches of international humanitarian law. ..." Sara commented .

This latest provocation is just the latest in a string of actions to undermine the work of the agency. Will health centres be next?, "Sara said.

The agency said the closures will affect around 800 children, with no alternatives yet announced for them to continue their education.

"This is an assault on children. An assault on education," UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said in a statement.

"Storming schools and forcing them shut is a blatant disregard of international law."

"These schools are inviolable premises of the United Nations. UNRWA schools must continue to be open to safeguard an entire generation of children," Lazzarini added.

The development follows two bills passed by the Israeli Knesset last year, prohibiting UNRWA from conducting activities within Israel’s borders and making it illegal for Israeli officials to have any contact with UNRWA.

Those measures have been in effect since late January.

Israel has accused UNRWA employees of involvement in the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, a charge vehemently denied by the UN.

On his part, Roland Friedrich, Director for UNRWA Affairs in the West Bank, warned that the Palestine refugee children are at an "immediate risk" of losing their access to education.

"Israel’s actions today are a grave violation of its obligations as a UN Member State under international law," he said in a social media post.

"So here, Israel is acting in contravention of its own obligations and commitments as a party to the so-called general convention."

In the short term, UNRWA’s students will be left scrambling to finish their school year, which ends in June.

In the longer term, Friedrich warned that the effects of the closures will be far reaching.

"This is going to have a psychological impact, and an economic impact on the families. It will create a host of humanitarian issues," he said.

He also warned that, more broadly, the closures have political implications, tightening Israeli control over areas that are internationally recognised as occupied.

"We at UNRWA are bound by international law, we’re also bound by the UN General Assembly Resolution   last September on ending the occupation," he said. 

"It states very clearly that no UN agency or member state should undertake any steps that further reinforce the illegal occupation."

On her part, Al Jazeera correspondent Nour Odeh said that the closure of the UNRWA schools is "extremely problematic" because children would likely end up at Israeli institutions run by the Jerusalem Municipality and Israeli schools do not teach the Palestinian curriculum.

"It is an Israeli-run curriculum that Palestinians say ignores and erases Palestinian identity," Odeh said.

That move, is likely to have a "crippling effect" on UNRWA’s operations "in 19 other refugee camps" across the occupied West Bank, affecting "Palestinians who rely on the agency, not just for education but also for health services, for psychosocial support" Odeh added.

UNRWA has long faced attempts by the Israeli authorities to curtail its activities in East Jerusalem and bring all services, including education, under Israeli oversight, a part of its comprehensive war against the Palestinian presence and identity.

The Israeli campaign against the UNRWA has escalated in January as it ordered UNRWA to vacate all premises in the neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah in occupied East Jerusalem, where the Agency has had an established presence for more than 70 years and its headquarters is the centre of operations of the Agency’s work in the occupied West Bank including East Jerusalem.

An order which is in contradiction to international law obligations of UN member states including Israel, which is bound by the General Convention on Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations.  

Israel effectively annexed East Jerusalem in 1980 in a move not recognised by most of the international community, and sees the whole city as its capital.

Palestinians see East Jerusalem as the capital of their hoped-for future state.

Speaking to an advisory committee in Geneva, UNRWA Commissioner-General Lazzarini said the agency has been the target of a "global disinformation campaign" led by Israel that is "premised on the misguided belief that if UNRWA disappears, so will the issue of Palestine refugees."