Israel orders closure of six UN schools in East Jerusalem after raids

(CNN) — Israeli forces raided six United Nations schools in East Jerusalem, ordering them to close within 30 days, according to UNRWA, the UN agency for the Palestinian refugees, and the Israeli Ministry of Education.

Approximately 800 students will be directly impacted by the closure orders and may not be able to finish the school year, UNRWA’s Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said on social media. Schools run by the agency serve Palestinians in areas occupied by Israel, including East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza.

“UNRWA schools are protected by the privileges and immunities of the United Nations,” Lazzarini said. “Today’s unauthorized entries and issuance of closure orders are a violation of these protections.”

Israel’s Ministry of Education said in a statement that parents were directed to register their students at other schools. “The professional staff at the Ministry of Education continue to support the educational framework for each student.”

In October, Israel’s parliament passed a law banning UNRWA from activity within Israel and revoking the 1967 treaty that allowed the agency to carry out its mission.

Yulia Malinovsky, a member of the Israeli parliament who sponsored the bill to ban UNRWA, confirmed the closure orders. The schools will have until May 8, she said.

“We’re also working very hard to close the water and electricity to all of UNRWA’s facilities (in areas occupied by Israel),” Malinovsky said. “We’re doing everything we can to implement the UNRWA bills fully in all institutions and in all aspects.”

Israel has long sought to dismantle the UN agency, arguing that some of its employees are members of Hamas and that UNRWA’s education system teaches students to hate Israel.

A UN-commissioned inquiry found that examples in textbooks of anti-Israel bias were “marginal” but nonetheless constituted “a grave violation of neutrality.”

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have alleged that a handful of UNRWA’s 13,000 employees in Gaza participated in the October 7 massacre. UNRWA has repeatedly denied these accusations, saying there is “absolutely no ground for a blanket description of ‘the institution as a whole’ being ‘totally infiltrated.’”

UNRWA was founded by the United Nations a year after the 1948 creation of Israel that led to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes in an event known by Palestinians as the “Nakba” (catastrophe).

The agency, which began by assisting about 750,000 Palestinian refugees in 1950, now serves some 5.9 million across the Middle East, many of whom live in refugee camps in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem as well as in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria.

In the Gaza Strip, which has been ravaged by a devastating Israeli war for more than a year, UNRWA serves some 1.7 million Palestinian refugees. In the West Bank and East Jerusalem, it assists around 871,500 refugees.

Deadly airstrike in Gaza City

On Wednesday, an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City killed at least 23 Palestinians, including eight children, according to Gaza’s Civil Defense, as the Israeli military said it targeted a senior Hamas militant.

The strike destroyed a four-story residential building in the Al-Shujaiya neighborhood in Gaza City and wounded at least 60 others, the Civil Defense said. More than 30 Palestinians are also missing under the rubble, the organization said, including 19 members from one family.

“I was heading out to fill water and, on my return back, all of a sudden an entire block was targeted with women and children,” said Hatem Jundyeh, who lives nearby. “What have we done? Are we Hamas so they strike us?”

On Wednesday, the Israel Defense Forces and the Israel Security Agency said they struck a “command and control center” in the Gaza City area, killing Haitham Razek Abd al-Karim Sheikh Khalil, who they said commanded the Hamas infiltration into the southern Israeli community of Nir Oz on October 7, 2023.

In the aftermath of the strike, rescue crews searched under the debris for any signs of life. One group pulled the body of young boy from the rubble, his body limp and his face bloodied. Another crew nearby tried to jackhammer through enormous slabs of destroyed concrete in a race to save anyone who might still be trapped.

“What tools do we have? The entire world is fighting us,” said one volunteer with the Civil Defense. “We recovered a body of a child, but next to him there – his brothers and parents and siblings. The entire world is watching with silence.”

Ambulances quickly filled with the wounded in a rush for medical treatment. At the hospital, Palestinians killed in the strike were wrapped in white cloths or rugs.

Dr. Fadel Naim, director of Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza, said on social media that one of “the most harrowing cases I’ve witnessed during this war” was a 20-year-old woman who had both breasts and an arm amputated. “What crime did she commit to deserve such brutal disfigurement and the shattering of her future?” Naim asked.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said they struck a “senior Hamas terrorist” who planned and carried out attacks from northern Gaza. “Prior to the strike, numerous steps were taken to mitigate harm to civilians including the use of precise weapons, aerial surveillance, and additional intelligence,” the IDF said in a statement after the strike. The IDF did not identify the target of the strike.

The strike in northern Gaza comes as the IDF expands its operations in Rafah in the southern portion of the coastal enclave, as a source familiar with the matter tells CNN Israel is planning to hold a significant portion of Gaza for an “indefinite” period of time.

Last week, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz announced a major expansion of the military’s operation in Gaza involving the seizure of large areas of land that would be “incorporated into Israel’s security zones.”

The operation would also involve “large-scale evacuation of Gaza’s population from combat zones,” his statement said without specifying details. Katz said the military operation would expand to “crush and clear the area of terrorists and terror infrastructure, while seizing large areas that will be incorporated into Israel’s security zone.”

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