Ramallah, May 12, 2025 – Armed Israeli forces stormed and forcibly shut down three UNRWA-run schools in the Shuafat refugee camp in occupied East Jerusalem, enforcing illegal closure orders issued on 8 April, 2025.
On May 6, Israeli forces stormed schools within the Shuafat refugee camp that were operated by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), ordering their closure and for all students to be dismissed. More than 550 Palestinian children, between the ages of six and 15, were sent home, teachers were harassed and one UNRWA staff member was detained. These evacuations left children in tears and left families wondering how their children would continue their education.
“These acts are a blatant attack on children’s right to an education, on international law, and on the presence of Palestinians in their capital,” said Ayed Abu Eqtaish, Accountability Program Director at DCIP. “Forcing children out of their schools at gunpoint is not a security measure—it is a tactic of erasure.”
This crackdown follows recent anti-UNWRA legislative measures in the Knesset, as well as other legislation aimed at banning Palestinians with degrees from Palestinian universities from teaching in schools run by Israeli authorities, further codifying apartheid and educational segregation.
Palestinian children now face an immediate and devastating loss of access to education. These schools are not only lifelines for Palestinian children, but they are also UN institutions, operating under a mandate granted by the UN General Assembly that explicitly includes East Jerusalem. Israel’s assault on UNRWA violates its obligations as a UN member state and is a calculated effort to strip Palestinians of critical, internationally guaranteed resources. It is not only an attack on Palestinian rights, but a direct assault on the UN system itself and the international rules-based order.
International human rights law enshrines the right to education for all, while the Convention on the Rights of the Child specifically establishes the right of children to an education. Under the Fourth Geneva Convention, and affirmed by the 2024 International Court of Justice (ICJ) advisory opinion, Israel, as the occupying power, is legally obligated to ensure that educational institutions can function and that the rights of the protected Palestinian population, including children’s access to schooling, are upheld. Instead, Israeli authorities are entrenching annexation through the violent suppression of basic rights.
In recent ICJ hearings on Israel’s obligations regarding the presence and activities of the UN, other international organizations, and third states in the occupied Palestinian territory, the UN reaffirmed its permanent responsibility for the question of Palestine, exercised through UNRWA. The State of Palestine emphasized that UNRWA is essential to the very survival of the Palestinian people, illustrating how Israel’s entrenched regime of economic and environmental domination has rendered Palestinians dependent on the agency—a dependency created and sustained by colonial occupation and apartheid.
DCIP calls on the international community to condemn these acts, enforce international legal obligations, and take immediate steps to protect Palestinian children’s right to education from the growing threat of Israeli state violence and repression.
