Armed Israeli security forces have forced the closure of three schools run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) in Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem.
Hundreds of Palestinian students were sent home from the schools in Shuafat refugee camp just after classes began on Thursday morning.
Unrwa’s Commissioner-General, Philippe Lazzarini, said Israeli authorities were denying children their basic right to learn and accused them of a “blatant disregard of international law”.
An Israeli ban on Unrwa took effect earlier this year and Israel accuses the agency of being infiltrated by Hamas. Unrwa denies this claim and insists on its impartiality.
Videos showed girls in uniform hugging each other outside one school in Shuafat following the arrival of Israeli forces outside.
A closure order fixed to the wall of the school read: “It will be prohibited to operate educational institutions, or employ teachers, teaching staff or any other staff, and it will be forbidden to accommodate students or allow the entry of students into this institution.”
Unrwa said that more than 550 pupils aged six to 15 were present and that one of its staff members was detained, in what its director in the occupied West Bank called “a traumatising experience for young children who are at immediate risk of losing their access to education”.
The agency said that Israeli police were also deployed at three other schools in East Jerusalem, forcing them to send their students home too.
“Storming schools and forcing them shut is a blatant disregard of international law,” Philippe Lazzarini wrote on X. “These schools are inviolable premises of the United Nations.”
He added: “By enforcing closure orders issued last month, the Israeli authorities are denying Palestinian children their basic right to learn.
“Unrwa schools must continue to be open to safeguard an entire generation of children.”
The Palestinian Authority, which governs parts of the West Bank not under Israeli control, said the move was a “violation of children’s right to education”.
The British consulate in Jerusalem said the UK, EU, Norway, Switzerland, Turkey and Japan strongly opposed the closure orders issued against the Unrwa schools and stood “in solidarity with students, parents, and teachers”.
“Unrwa has operated in East Jerusalem under its UN General Assembly mandate since 1950. Israel is obliged under international humanitarian law to facilitate the proper working of all institutions devoted to the education of children,” they added.
Last year, Israel’s parliament passed laws forbidding contact between Israeli officials and Unrwa, as well as banning activity by the agency in Israeli territory.
Israel captured East Jerusalem, along with the rest of the West Bank, in the 1967 Middle East war.
It 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.
Approximately 230,000 Israeli settlers currently live in East Jerusalem alongside 390,000 Palestinians.
Most of the international community considers the settlements built there and elsewhere in the West Bank to be illegal under international law – a position supported by an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) last year – although Israel disputes this.
