Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
Armed Israeli security forces have forced the closure of three schools that were run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) in Israelically canceled East Jerusalem.
Hundreds of Palestinian students were sent home from the schools in the Schuafat refugee camp just after the lessons started on Thursday morning.
The Commissioner General of UNRWA, Philippe Lazzarini, said that the Israeli authorities denied children their basic rights to learn and accused them of a “flagrant contempt for international law”.
An Israeli ban on UNRWA came into force earlier this year and Israel accused the agency infiltrated by Hamas. UNRWA denies this claim and is on its impartiality.
Videos showed girls in uniform who embraced each other outside one school in Shuafat after the arrival of Israeli troops outside.
A closing assignment established on the wall of the school was: “It will be forbidden to exploit educational institutions, or to hire teachers, staff or other staff, and it is forbidden to accommodate students or allow students to join this institution.”
UNRWA said that more than 550 students aged six to 15 were present and that one of his employees was held, in what its director in the occupied West Bank ‘a traumatizing experience for young children who immediately run the risk of losing their access to education’.
The agency said that the Israeli police were also used at three other schools in Oost -Jerusalem, so they would also send their students home.
“Storming schools and forcing them is a blatant neglect of international law,” wrote Philippe Lazzarini on X. “These schools are inviolable buildings of the United Nations.”
He added: “By enforcing closing assignments published last month, the Israeli authorities Palestinian children deny their basic right to learn.
“UNRWA schools must remain open to protect an entire generation of children.”
The Palestinian Authority, which controls parts of the West Bank, not under Israeli control, said that the move was a “violation of the right of children to education”.
The British consulate in Jerusalem said that the VK, the EU, Norway, Switzerland, Turkey and Japan strongly opposed the closing orders that were published against the UNRWA schools and “in solidarity with students, parents and teachers”.
“UNRWA has been operated on in Oost -Jerusalem since 1950 under the Mandate General Meeting of the UN.
Last year, the Israeli parliament adopted laws that prohibit contact between Israeli officials and UNRWA, as well as prohibiting activities by the agency in Israeli territory.
Israel captured East -Jerusalem, together with the rest of the West Bank, in the war in the middle of 1967.
The annexed Eastern East Jerusalem in 1980 in a movement that is not recognized by most of the international community, and sees the entire city as the capital.
Palestinians see East Jerusalem as the capital of their hoped-for future state.
About 230,000 Israeli settlers currently live in Oost -Jerusalem in addition to 390,000 Palestinians.
The majority of the international community regards the settlements that have been built there and elsewhere on the West Bank as illegal under international law – a function that is supported last year by an advice from the International Court of Appeal (ICJ) – although Israel disputes this.
