How Unrwa school closures could damage the education of hundreds of Palestinian children

Israeli officials, flanked by security forces, raided six schools run by the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees (Unrwa) in occupied East Jerusalem last week and handed 30-day closure orders to staff.

The order was issued by the Israeli Ministry of Education, which claimed the schools were operating without licences.

This means around 800 children will receive no education, only weeks before the end of the school year. Instead, they will be set adrift in the East Jerusalem school system, which is already plagued by classroom shortages and funding cuts. 

Since the 1950s, Unrwa has run schools and medical clinics in East Jerusalem, which Israel seized during the Arab-Israeli war of 1967.

The agency is now the second biggest provider of education in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) after the Palestinian Authority (PA), operating 96 schools in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and serving nearly 50,000 students from the first to the ninth grades.

Read more: How Unrwa school closures could damage the education of hundreds of Palestinian children