Ahead of 77th Nakba Day, Israel Shut Down 6 UNRWA Schools in Jerusalem

When the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) was established in 1949, it started its operations in Jerusalem. Nobody expected that it would be forced to shut down its activities in the face of Palestinian refugees in the city who still needed its services. Even more perversely, Palestinians could never have imagined that the only institution that bore witness to their forced displacement would be forced out of Jerusalem during the 77th commemoration of the Nakba.

Last Thursday, May 8, Palestinian school boys and girls in six UNRWA schools in Jerusalem were forced to interrupt classes and go home after the Israeli police raided the schools and shut them down permanently. Three of these schools were located in the Shu’fat refugee camp in the city’s eastern periphery, and three more in the Jerusalem neighborhoods of Silwan, Sur Baher, and Wadi al-Joz. As a result, over 800 Palestinian students are now left without school, forced to seek education at institutions run by Israeli authorities and teaching the Israeli curriculum.

“We were in the first period of classes when the principal came and told us to gather our things and go outside, and she said that there would be no more classes because the school was shutting down,” Layan Natsheh, 11, a fifth-grader at the Shu’fat UNRWA primary girls’ school, told Mondoweiss. “We took our backpacks and went out. I saw a lot of policemen with guns and was scared, and the principal told us to go home.”

“Teachers had been saying that the school might shut down,” Layan continued. “And I heard that and was scared that I won’t be able to go back.

Despite her young age, Layan understands the political implications of the shutdown. “The school belongs to UNRWA, which is a UN branch that gives help to refugees like us,” she said knowledgeably. “My grandparents are from Jerusalem’s Old City from a place that became part of the Jewish Quarter, and they came to Shu’fat during the Nakba.”

Israel has intensified its attack on UNRWA since October 2023, when it claimed that 13 UNRWA employees in Gaza had participated in the October 7 attacks. Israel also accused the UN agency of employing 450 “military operatives” from Hamas and other resistance groups. An independent investigation commissioned by the UN rejected the accusation, and top EU officials determined that Israel had not provided sufficient evidence to support its allegations. While most UN states decided to resume funding to UNRWA, Israel has continued to call for replacing it with other international organizations.

Israel has since waged a multi-pronged campaign against the UN agency, including attacking and killing its staff members in Gaza, who have been responsible for the provision of humanitarian aid to the population during the ongoing Israeli genocide in the Strip.

In October 2024, Israel banned UNRWA’s activities in Israel, which under Israeli law includes East Jerusalem -itself a contravention of international law, given that Jerusalem is internationally recognized as occupied territory. Israel also banned Israeli officials and state employees from having contact with the agency.

UNRWA was forced to close its headquarters in Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood on January 30. Its international staff, including its director, left for Jordan.

An Attack on All Jerusalem Residents

For Layan Natsheh, school was more than just going to class. “All my friends are my schoolmates, and they are all from the [Shu’fat] camp,” she explained. “But we don’t have anywhere to play in the camp. School is the only place we can meet.”

“My friends said that their parents will move them to other schools outside of the camp, like in al-Ram,” Layan said, referring to the Palestinian town lying northeast of Jerusalem.

“I don’t want us to leave the camp, and I don’t want to leave my friends, but now I won’t be able to finish the school year,” she added.

The forcible closure of UNRWA schools in Jerusalem comes a month ahead of the end of the school year, which has placed added pressure on school children ahead of final exams. “This puts the academic future of our children at risk,” a parent of two children in Shu’fat, who asked not to be named, told Mondoweiss. “Most likely, they will have to repeat the whole year, and the only alternative we have is the Israeli municipality schools, which teach the Israeli curriculum that we don’t want our children to study.”

“The UNRWA schools are a pillar of any refugee camp,” the parent added. “They are part of what holds the camp together as a community. By shutting them down, the occupation wants to dissolve the camp, which is the point behind banning UNRWA a month ago.”

“But this doesn’t only affect the refugee community, because in Jerusalem, Palestinian communities are mixed,” the parent pointed out. “Refugee families live here in Shu’fat. Some families are originally from the Jerusalem area or from the city itself. And you have other families where one spouse is from Jerusalem and the other is from the West Bank — West Bank Palestinians are allowed to reside in Shu’fat, but not in the inner city of Jerusalem.”

“We have Palestinians from all backgrounds, Muslims and Christians, for whom the camp is an affordable place to live and preserve their residency rights in the city,” the parent added. “UNRWA services are essential for our community, and shutting them down will affect all Palestinians in Jerusalem.”

Driving Refugees Out of Jerusalem

Abeer Ismail, an UNRWA spokesperson, told Mondoweiss that the agency’s services in Jerusalem “serve the Palestinian population at large, and not only refugees.”

“Our schools and medical centers serve some 70,000 people, which makes UNRWA a main sustainer of the Palestinian presence in the city,” Ismail said. “And shutting down the work of UNRWA in Jerusalem will have an impact on the capacity of Palestinians to remain in the city.”

“Following the ban, all our international staff left the city and the country altogether,” Ismail added. “We are left with the local Palestinian workers, who are subject to possible arrest by Israel or persecution at any moment. In fact, when the Israeli police forced the shutdown of the schools in Jerusalem last week, they arrested our camp director in Shu’fat, Fathi Saleh, for not having complied with the previous order to shut them down. He was released hours later on bail.”

The campaign against the UN agency takes on special significance in Jerusalem, Ismail said, given the political and historic significance of the city as home to UNRWA’s first headquarters. “The fact that its headquarters were in Jerusalem for over 70 years makes the closure of its institutions in the city even more symbolic.”

“We are neither optimistic nor pessimistic about the future,” Abeer Ismail affirmed. “Our mandate is to continue our work until Palestinians can exercise their right to return. Independent of these conditions, we will continue to fulfill our mandate.”