Israel closes 6 UN schools for Palestinians in east Jerusalem

A student and a teacher carry study material at UNRWA Girls School run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees in the Shuafat Refugee Camp in east Jerusalem, Thursday, May 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)

JERUSALEM — Israel permanently closed six UN schools in east Jerusalem on Thursday, forcing Palestinian students to leave early and throwing the education of more than 800 others into question.

Last month, heavily armed Israeli police and Education Ministry officials ordered six schools in east Jerusalem to close within 30 days. The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, runs the six schools. UNRWA also runs schools in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, which continue to operate.

The closure orders come after Israel banned UNRWA from operating on its soil earlier this year, the culmination of a long campaign against the agency that intensified following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel that ignited the war in Gaza. Israel claims that UNRWA schools teach antisemitic content and anti-Israel sentiment, which UNRWA denies.

UNRWA is the main provider of education and health care to Palestinian refugees across east Jerusalem, which Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war. Israel has annexed east Jerusalem and considers the entire city its unified capital.

“When I said goodbye to the teachers, and when I went to hug the teachers, I started crying because I don’t know which school I will go to, and where we will study,” said Layan Ramadan Nataheh, a student at Shufat Basic Girls School, one of the UNRWA schools ordered shut.

“The presence of soldiers inside a school scares the girls, and the decision to close the school has affected their spirits and their future because they have nowhere to go,” said Shujan Abu Remailah, a resident of the Shufat refugee camp.

The Israeli Ministry of Education says it will place the students into other Jerusalem schools. But parents, teachers and administrators caution that closing the main schools in east Jerusalem will force their children to go through crowded and dangerous checkpoints daily, and some do not have the correct permits to pass through.

In a previous statement to The Associated Press, the Ministry of Education said it was closing the schools because they were operating without a license. UNRWA administrators pledged to keep the schools open for as long as possible.

Farhan Haq, the UN deputy spokesperson, on Thursday stressed the “inviolability” of UN facilities, quoting the statement from Philippe Lazzarini, the UNRWA Commissioner-General, saying that “storming schools and forcing them shut is a blatant disregard of international law.”

The Associated Press