24/4/2026 – Union for Justice Foundation
Under the weight of a systematic policy aimed at uprooting people from their roots, the education sector in Palestine today faces an existential battle that goes beyond books and pens, becoming a bitter struggle for survival. The current reality in the Jordan Valley, Masafer Yatta, and the villages near the separation barrier reflects a state of “soft educational annihilation” carried out in full view of the world. Bulldozers and barbed wire are swallowing the dreams of an entire generation, as roads are turned into makeshift classrooms and barren land into the only available school benches. This reality is clearly manifested in Khirbet Um al-Khair, south of Hebron, where, for the tenth consecutive day, children have been denied access to their schools due to a blockade imposed by settlers who placed barbed wire on the main roads. The situation has escalated beyond mere physical obstruction to direct physical attacks, as children have been subjected to toxic tear gas while attempting to reach their classrooms or peacefully protesting the closure of their road. This has resulted in numerous cases of suffocation and deep psychological trauma, in a futile attempt to break the will of an entire generation. Nevertheless, high school students continue to sit on the bare ground and take their final exams outdoors, affirming that knowledge cannot be confined behind fences and that the right to education is sacred and non-negotiable.
This blockade and the use of gas coincide with a comprehensive act of destruction targeting Al-Maleh Co-educational Basic School in the northern Jordan Valley. Authorities carried out a complete demolition of the facility, leaving nothing intact. The destruction included classrooms, water and electricity networks, and sanitation facilities, in addition to the confiscation of furniture and educational materials. Only a rented heritage building remains as a witness to an attempt to erase the Palestinian presence in the area. This forms part of a broader policy aimed at stripping residents of the most basic elements of a dignified life in order to force their displacement and impose ignorance on future generations. This approach aligns with a discriminatory system that enhances the welfare of nearby settlements at the expense of the indigenous population, depriving them of their right to development and educational stability, and placing hundreds of children before harsh choices that threaten either their academic future or their geographical belonging.
This systematic aggression has also taken a blood-stained turn in the village of Al-Mughayyir, where attacks have gone beyond besieging schools to the cold-blooded execution of childhood itself. This was tragically exemplified in the killing of the child Aws al-Nas’an by settlers’ gunfire following an attack on his school. This tragedy reproduces familial suffering, as his father had also been killed by settlers’ gunfire years earlier. It confirms that the Palestinian student today faces a dual threat: the demolition of their school and exposure to toxic gas on one hand, and the direct targeting of their life with live ammunition on the other. Educational institutions have thus been transformed into open military targets, demonstrating that policies of uprooting aim to eliminate generations that embody the will to persist, in flagrant violation of all international conventions that guarantee the protection of children and their personal and educational security.
From a legal perspective, the Union for Justice Foundation stresses that these integrated practices—ranging from the blockade and tear gas attacks on the children of Um al-Khair, to the destruction of Al-Maleh School, and the killing of childhood in Al-Mughayyir—constitute grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which obligates an occupying power to ensure access to education and protect educational institutions. These actions also stand in direct contradiction to Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. They amount to fully-fledged war crimes falling within policies of ethnic cleansing and forced displacement, which require the immediate prosecution of their perpetrators before international courts. Targeting schools, killing students, or poisoning their air with gas cannot be considered incidental acts; rather, they are part of a deliberate doctrine aimed at emptying the land through intimidation and enforced ignorance.
Based on these grave realities, the Union for Justice Foundation issues an urgent appeal to the United Nations, UNESCO, UNICEF, and all human rights bodies to take immediate on-the-ground action to reopen access roads to Um al-Khair, ensure safe passage for students, rebuild Al-Maleh School, and provide effective international protection for schools in the villages near the separation barrier. The Foundation emphasizes that international silence constitutes a cover for the continuation of these crimes, and that the true test of the credibility of human rights worldwide begins with guaranteeing the Palestinian child’s right to reach their school safely—away from barbed wire, tear gas canisters, and the barrels of guns.
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