Another two European-funded Palestinian schools in the occupied West Bank are threatened with demolition and seizure by the Israeli occupation authority.
The schools in Wadi as-Seeq and al-Muntar were built last year with European donor funding as humanitarian relief aid for Palestinian Bedouin communities lacking basic services.
The schools serve children of displaced and refugee communities who have already suffered destruction of their property by Israel over many years.
The schools are now the subject of Israeli court proceedings that could lead to their destruction and seizure. The hearings are scheduled for November 20 and December 10 according to the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC).
The NRC said its information counseling and legal aid program would provide legal assistance to the communities in court.
“Once again Palestinian children are facing the traumatic prospect of turning up for school and finding that it no longer exists” the NRC’s country director in Palestine Kate O’Rourke said.
“Once again we have to ask: Why are children being denied their fundamental right to education? This attack on schools is part of a wider drive to forcibly transfer Palestinian communities in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem to create space for illegal settlement expansion” O’Rourke added.
Headmaster of al-Muntar school Wisam Merei warned that “If the school was demolished most of the children would drop out.”
A community representative and parent Abu Hasan confirmed these concerns and said that “children do not have any other place to study in his community. This school allows local children to study without having to leave their community and use risky roads close to the nearby settlement.”
The Wadi as-Seeq community has received 11 stop-work orders for their structures in the last nine years. Two structures were demolished in 2012 and 2014 and all mobile latrines provided by a local NGO in 2011 were confiscated by the Israeli army’s civil administration which is now also attempting to seize the school from the community.
“We call on the governments and donors funding Palestinian children’s education to increase diplomatic pressure to prevent the demolition and seizure of school infrastructure which is in violation of international humanitarian law and all children’s basic right to education” O’Rourke said.
“The destruction of educational structures is not just a violation of international law it also demonstrates contempt towards the international community’s provision of aid to the occupied Palestinian population to ensure safe places for children to learn” she added.
“Earlier this year the Israeli authorities destroyed and damaged three other schools in the West Bank funded by international assistance just before children were due to go back to school after the summer break” according to the NRC.
“More than 60 schools in the West Bank are currently at risk of demolition and children in schools across the West Bank face attacks on their right to education” the NRC stated.
“In the first half of 2017 alone 93 education-related incidents affecting 13906 students were documented in the West Bank including incidents where children were arrested from their classrooms and exposed to harassment at checkpoints.”
