9/1/2026 – Union for Justice
Israel continues its attempts to erase Palestinian identity and presence through various means, aiming to break the resilience and determination of the Palestinian people and undermine their belief in their legitimate rights to their land. The Israeli occupation has not ceased committing ongoing crimes against the Palestinian people, whose intensity has markedly increased in the West Bank since the start of the genocidal war on Gaza. The latest of these crimes was the Israeli army’s storming of the Birzeit University campus in the city of Ramallah. This was neither an isolated nor an exceptional incident, but rather a recurring practice by occupation forces. Such an attack falls within a systematic colonial framework aimed at disrupting the role of universities and preventing them from fulfilling their intellectual, educational, and national responsibilities, while simultaneously promoting ignorance and spreading fear among the Palestinian population.
According to the Union for Justice’s monitoring of events and eyewitness accounts, on the morning of Tuesday, 6 January 2026, large numbers of Israeli soldiers and military vehicles stormed the Birzeit University campus after forcibly breaking its gate, at a time when large numbers of students and staff were present. The raid was carried out in a brutal manner, involving the firing of live ammunition at students, in addition to the use of sound grenades and tear gas canisters, resulting in the injury of 41 students, according to a statement issued by the university administration.
The Israeli occupation’s storming of the university campus in broad daylight, while lectures were in session and students were present in classrooms, constitutes a fully fledged crime targeting Palestinian education and the students’ right to learn in a safe environment. This attack also represents a blatant violation of all international norms and conventions that criminalize attacks on education and guarantee the protection of students and staff in academic institutions, foremost among them the Geneva Conventions and international humanitarian law.
The Union for Justice emphasizes its call—echoing the appeal of the university administration—to all international, human rights, and media institutions to assume their moral and legal responsibilities, to boycott the occupation’s educational and cultural institutions, and to take urgent action to expose these ongoing violations against Palestinian higher education, exert serious pressure to bring them to an end, and hold those responsible accountable.
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