GAZA, (PIC)
It was clear from the outset of the war on Gaza that Israel would not allow the residents of the Gaza Strip to continue their lives in any aspect, foremost among them housing, health, and education. Homes, hospitals, and most schools, which turned into shelters for the displaced, were targeted to completely eliminate the educational process within the sector.
Earlier, the Palestinian Ministry of Education revealed that 10,000 students and 400 teachers had been martyred in the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip since October 7 of last year. The ministry stated that 39,000 high school students from Gaza did not sit for the general secondary examination last year due to the ongoing aggression since October 7, adding that the occupation deprived ten thousand school and university students in the enclave of their right to education, including 450 high school students, in addition to the martyrdom of 400 teachers.
Deprivation of education
For its part, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) announced that all its schools in the Gaza Strip were closed due to the war, depriving 300,000 children of education. UNRWA said that more than 625,000 students have been deprived of education since the war on Gaza began, while 22,000 teachers lost their jobs in the education sector.
In a post on X platform at the beginning of last month, UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said that over 600,000 children are suffering from severe trauma and are living under the rubble, still deprived of education, half of whom were in UNRWA schools. He warned that “the longer children remain out of school, the greater the risk of losing a generation.”
He continued, “More than 70% of our schools in Gaza have been destroyed or damaged, the majority of which have become overcrowded shelters for hundreds of thousands of displaced families and cannot be used for education.”
Targeting displacement schools
Hundreds of thousands of displaced individuals from across the Gaza Strip sought refuge in UNRWA schools, government schools, and private schools in search of safety and to escape Israeli bombardment. However, many of these schools turned into pools of blood after being targeted by Israeli aircraft.
The Government Media Office (GMO) and the International Commission to Support the Rights of the Palestinian People documented Israel’s targeting of 181 shelters since the onset of the war, including 152 schools belonging to UNRWA, as well as government and private schools that were occupied by the displaced. The number of martyrs among the displaced within these shelters surpassed 1,040.
According to GMO documentation, the occupation army deliberately destroyed 15 vital sectors, including education. It completely destroyed 117 schools and universities and partially destroyed 332 others, in addition to killing 500 teachers and school administrators, 100 scholars, researchers, and university professors, as well as 9,000 school and university students.
Ismail Thawabta, the GMO Director General said that the past months of war witnessed 9,000 deaths, along with 1.8 million cases of various illnesses due to the conditions of war and displacement.
Ignorance and displacement
Thawabta affirmed in an interview with Al Jazeera that Israel is committing massacres and targeting all means of life in Gaza, including schools and hospitals, as part of military pressures to achieve political goals.
For his part, Salah Abdul-Aati, head of the International Commission for Defending the Rights of the Palestinian People (Hashd), believes that Israel’s targeting and destruction of schools aims at enforcing ignorance and displacement.
In doing so, it continues its crime of genocide as part of a strategy to destroy all means of life in Gaza, including the education sector.
The war has deprived 800,000 students of education, including 39,000 who missed the general secondary examination (Tawjihi) qualifying for university enrollment. The genocide crimes committed by the occupation forces over the past ten months fall within a systematic plan, according to Thawabta, aimed at killing Palestinians with missiles, shells, and diseases, and rendering them ignorant and displaced.
Educational genocide
In April of this year, 19 UN experts and rapporteurs said in a joint statement that the destruction affecting more than 80% of educational facilities confirms the Israeli intent to comprehensively destroy the Palestinian education system, which has become to be known as educational genocide.
This term refers to the systematic erasure of education through the detention or killing of teachers, students, and staff, as well as the destruction of educational infrastructure.
The experts said in their declaration that the ongoing attacks on the educational infrastructure in Gaza have a long-term devastating impact on the population’s fundamental rights to learn and express themselves freely, depriving another generation of Palestinians of their future.
Violation of international law
Article 50 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states that the occupying power, with the assistance of national and local authorities, shall ensure the proper functioning of the institutions devoted to the care and education of children, and it must take all necessary measures to facilitate the verification of children’s identities and the registration of their parentage. It shall not, in any case, change their personal status or place them in formations or organizations under its control.
The article further adds, “If local institutions are unable, the occupying power must take steps to secure the maintenance and education of children who have been orphaned or separated from their parents due to the war, in the absence of a relative or friend who can care for them, and this should be done whenever possible by individuals of their nationality, language, and religion.”
