A view from Arab Keabine Primary School, which was attacked by illegal Israeli settlers in Jericho, West Bank on September 17, 2024. [Ameer Abed Rabbo – Anadolu Agency]
Every day, Palestinian children in the occupied West Bank run the gauntlet of Israeli roadblocks, checkpoints and settler attacks on their way to school. Since the launch of Israel’s major military operation in the West Bank in January, though, the trip has become even more perilous. Thousands of troops are sweeping through refugee camps and cities and demolishing houses and infrastructure, including roads that children use to get to school.
Tens of thousands of Palestinians have fled their homes since January in what the United Nations says is the largest displacement in the West Bank since the 1967 war when Israel seized the area, along with Gaza and parts of Jerusalem.
The impact on children’s education is reminiscent of the havoc caused in the Gaza Strip during Israel’s “plausible genocide” that has followed a Hamas-led cross-border incursion on 7 October, 2023, during which 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 were taken hostage.
Children in Gaza had just begun to return to classes among bombed-out buildings when Israeli air strikes resumed on 18 March, shattering a weeks-long ceasefire. Nearly half of the more than 400 people killed that day were children, one of the deadliest in the conflict, according to Palestinian officials cited by the U.N.
Palestinian health authorities have said that Israel’s ground and air campaign in Gaza has killed more than 50,000 people, with just over half of identified victims being women, children or older people. An estimate 11,000 are still missing, presumed dead, under the rubble of their homes and other civilian infrastructure.
“The ability for Palestinian children to access quality education in the West Bank or in Gaza has never been under more stress,” said Alexandra Saieh, global head of humanitarian policy and advocacy at Save the Children.
Violent incidents have increased in the West Bank since the war in Gaza began.
Last year, 85 students were killed and 525 were injured in Israeli military operations there, according to a report by the Occupied Palestinian Territory Education Cluster, which includes UN agencies.
Israel says that its latest military operation, which has so far killed at least 30 Palestinians in the West Bank, is aimed at hitting Iranian-backed “militant” groups, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad, that have established strongholds in the crowded townships that house Palestinian refugees and their descendants who fled or were driven from their homes in the 1948 Nakba which led to the creation of the state of Israel.
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Constant fighting has paralysed movement, and more than 806,000 students found their access to education restricted in the West Bank and East Jerusalem in 2024, explained the Education Cluster report. Last year, the Palestinian ministry of education recorded more than 2,200 incidents of violence targeting the education system in the West Bank, according to the report. These included attacks by armed Israeli settlers on schools and the detention of students or teachers. At least 109 schools were attacked or vandalised.
More than half of Palestinian students reported being delayed or harassed on their way to school, with many saying that they had been physically assaulted. Longer travel times also mean increased costs for already stressed and poorly paid teachers.
“Checkpoints are also increasing risks of violence for students, their caregivers and teachers from Israeli forces or from settlers who, in some areas, have taken advantage of the fact that cars are not able to move to damage them and attack passengers,” said the report.
With their incomes plummeting because of the violence, families have reduced their spending on education.
This means that Palestinian children could be forced to drop out, say aid agencies.
To make matters worse, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, UNRWA, which runs 96 schools in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, could be forced to stop its work following an Israeli ban on its operations on Israeli and Israeli-controlled, occupied Palestinian territory. Moreover, funding cuts from major donors, including the United States where President Donald Trump has terminated thousands of foreign aid projects, could further cripple UNRWA’s services.
“It’s not just the US cuts,” said Saieh. “We’re looking at a broader reduction in funding to humanitarian assistance globally, and that’s what’s alarming, noting that this could have an effect on Palestinians’ traditionally high literacy rates. Palestinians are known for this… around the world, and so this is particularly disheartening to see.”
The US and more than a dozen other countries stopped funding the UNRWA in January 2024 after Israel accused 12 of its 13,000 employees in Gaza of taking part in the Hamas-led attack on Israel. UNRWA said that Israel provided no evidence for its allegation. Nevertheless, in December, Sweden also cut its support, a decision the agency said came at the worst time for Palestinian refugees.
“We are living with an accumulated deficit, and that is affecting the quality of our education,” said Muawia Amar, chief of UNRWA’s field educational programme in the West Bank, in an interview with the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
The law banning UNRWA operations on Israeli land came into effect in January, but has not yet been fully implemented.
“At any moment, UNRWA could be prevented from working,” Amar said. “I am talking about 47,000 students in UNRWA schools [in the West Bank], and this is a big problem.”
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