Union for Justice: When Access to Education in Palestine Becomes a Crime
05/12/2025 – Union for Justice
Education in Palestine faces one of the harshest environments in the world, not merely due to limited resources, but because the occupation turns the school into a daily battlefield between the Palestinians’ will to remain and persistent attempts to erase their existence. Schools in villages and marginalized areas are no longer just places where children receive their lessons; they have become symbols of steadfastness and a right constantly threatened with demolition and confiscation at any moment, especially in areas classified as “C,” which are under full occupation control. Here, access to education becomes a perilous journey, and construction and renovation turn into a “crime” requiring a “permit” that the occupation does not grant in the first place, making every school that is built a genuine act of resistance.
Masafer Yatta is considered one of the areas where repression is most intense. This region, stretching south of Hebron, lives under a constant threat, as the occupation imposes a suffocating military reality and prevents construction there on the grounds that it is a “military training zone.” Yet behind this cold description lies a clear policy aimed at expelling residents by depriving them of the most basic necessities of life, foremost among them education. Schools in the Masafer are not permanent buildings; they are often constructed from tin sheets or set up in mobile rooms, because the occupation does not allow any permanent construction. Each time residents attempt to provide an educational environment for their children, a soldier or a military jeep arrives carrying a paper labeled “demolition order,” as if education itself were an accusation.
Schools Between the Will to Remain and Attempts at Erasure
Over the past years, schools in the Masafer have been subjected to repeated demolition operations, some of them demolished more than once, such as Umm Qusa School and Khushm Al-Daraj. With every demolition, residents rebuild anew, as if telling the military machine that a school is not walls, but the spirit of a community that does not die. Children there go to their schools along long dirt roads, confront checkpoints, and sit in classrooms sometimes without electricity and sometimes without windows; yet they preserve their books as one preserves an entire life.
Recently, the occupation has escalated its assault once again, issuing a new demolition order against one of the area’s schools, Khallat Amira School, despite having demolished it last year and leveled it completely to the ground. This school, which residents rebuilt with difficulty and with the help of institutions, is today once again threatened with disappearance beneath the army’s bulldozer. The mayor, Majdi Al-Adra, said:
“This notice confirms that the occupation is not targeting a specific building, but rather targeting the very existence of the Palestinian human being, and that depriving children of education is a blatant violation of all international laws and human rights.”
Education in Marginalized Areas: A Daily Struggle for Existence
The story of education in Palestine, especially in the Masafer, is not merely a passing hardship, but a daily testimony to the resilience of a community that chose to fight with books instead of violence, and to confront the bulldozer with chalk and notebooks. Every school that is demolished does not signify the end of the lesson, but the beginning of a new one: that education here is not a luxury, but an act of resistance and life, and that the Palestinian child, no matter how much the occupation attempts to marginalize them, will grow up knowing that the first struggle they fought was in defense of their school.
Moreover, these repeated attacks on schools do not merely contradict humanitarian values or the natural right of the child to education; they constitute a clear and explicit violation of what is stipulated in the most important international agreements, foremost among them the Geneva Conventions and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Under the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, an occupying power is prohibited from destroying or confiscating civilian property unless there is absolute military necessity—a pretext that cannot be applied to schools serving civilian children. The Convention also prohibits the forcible transfer of populations, their intimidation, or the use of methods that render their lives unviable, which is precisely what occurs in practice when a school is demolished in a remote area such as the Masafer, because the school here is not merely an educational facility, but a fundamental condition for the survival of the community.
As for the Rome Statute, under which the International Criminal Court was established, it considers the widespread destruction of civilian property without military necessity, attacks on educational institutions, the forcible displacement of populations, and the deliberate deprivation of children of their basic rights, to be war crimes. The Statute further stipulates that targeting civilian buildings, including schools, rendering them unsafe, or depriving populations of their use constitutes a violation for which individuals are held personally accountable, not only states. This means that every demolition of a Palestinian school is not an administrative incident as the occupation claims, but an act that falls within the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court and constitutes a breach of the rules of international humanitarian law.
Accordingly, the demolition of Khallat Amira School and the renewed threat to demolish it, like dozens of other schools in the Masafer, is not merely an assault on a simple tin structure, but a direct violation of international agreements adopted by humanity after devastating wars, which explicitly affirmed the protection of civilians and children in particular. Nevertheless, Palestinians continue to rebuild, as if declaring that the law may sometimes be absent, but the right does not fall, and that the school that returns to life after every demolition proves that the will of the people is stronger than the bulldozer, and that education in Palestine will remain standing no matter how hard the occupation tries to erase it.
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