According to UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, and the Israeli Ministry of Education, Israeli forces raided six United Nations schools in East Jerusalem and ordered them to close within 30 days.
The closure orders would have a direct impact on about 800 students, who may be unable to complete the school year, UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said on social media.
The agency’s schools assist Palestinians in Israeli-occupied territories such as East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza.
“UNRWA schools are protected by the privileges and immunities of the United Nations,” Lazzarini said. “Today’s unauthorized entries and issuance of closure orders are a violation of these protections.”
Israel’s Ministry of Education said in a statement that parents were directed to register their students at other schools.
“The professional staff at the Ministry of Education continue to support the educational framework for each student.”
In October, Israel’s parliament passed a law banning UNRWA from activity within Israel and revoking the 1967 treaty that allowed the agency to carry out its mission.
Yulia Malinovsky, a member of the Israeli parliament who sponsored the bill to ban UNRWA, confirmed the closure orders. The schools will have until May 8, she said.
Israel has long sought to dismantle the UN agency, arguing that some of its employees are members of Hamas and that UNRWA’s education system teaches students to hate Israel.
A UN-commissioned inquiry found that examples in textbooks of anti-Israel bias were “marginal” but nonetheless constituted “a grave violation of neutrality.”
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have alleged that a handful of UNRWA’s 13,000 employees in Gaza participated in the October 7 massacre. UNRWA has repeatedly denied these accusations, saying there is “absolutely no ground for a blanket description of ‘the institution as a whole’ being ‘totally infiltrated.’”
