SEVERAL Palestinian associations and institutions have issued a statement calling on the international community to save Palestinian schools from the occupation’s education genocide, as part of the International Academic Campaign against Israeli occupation and apartheid.
To mark International Day for the Protection of Education from Attack, which is observed on 9th September each year, the signatories called upon the international community and the Member States of the United Nations to take immediate action to protect Palestinian education from Israeli military attacks, which are being carried out deliberately and in a planned manner in the context of the genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people.
They affirmed the need to save Palestinian schools from Israeli aggression.
The position statement also called for an immediate ceasefire and the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip, including the reconstruction of its educational infrastructure, and calling to hold Israel accountable for its crimes against education and children, as well as the demolition and incursions into schools.
The signatories also stressed the need for immediate action to protect schools, as safe havens for students and teachers, underscoring the need to keep education at the top of the global agenda.
They emphasised the need to allocate urgent and immediate United Nations assistance programmes to continue the educational process, to fund programmes to compensate for the education lost, to ensure a rapid medical response to permanent injuries suffered by children, especially the provision of artificial limbs, the distribution of polio vaccines in safe conditions and the opening of border crossings for the treatment of Gaza children in hospitals abroad.
The position statement also stressed the urgent need for all UN General Assembly member states to sign the ‘Safe Schools Declaration’, which calls to implement guidelines to protect schools and universities from military use.
The signatories further expressed regret at the continued use of double standards in situations of armed conflict.
According to the UN, 80% of Gaza’s schools have been destroyed or damaged, preventing some 620,000 students from completing their education and 39,000 Gaza students from taking the high school exams, due to the genocidal war waged on the Strip, and the destruction of the education sector.
At least 10,000 students have been killed in Israel’s ongoing aggression on Gaza, and 13,444 others wounded.
Also, 397 teachers have been killed, representing approximately 1.8% of the number of teachers in Gaza.
117 university professors and 760 university students have been killed in Gaza and the West Bank and around 450 high school students. About 197 university students and eight higher education workers from the West Bank have been detained by the occupation.
At least 288 schools were turned into shelters for the displaced in Gaza, including 155 schools run by UNRWA.
Moreover, 90% of schools in the Gaza Strip, including 712 public, private, or agency schools, have been either completely or partially destroyed.
The interim report issued in March 2024 by the World Bank, UNRWA, and the European Union estimated the cost of damages to the education sector at $341 million.
- In a statement on Sunday, the Palestinian Civil Defence in the Gaza Strip said that 83 members of its responder crews have been killed and 270 wounded since the Israeli regime launched its genocidal war against the besieged territory in October last year.
‘That means 40 per cent of crews have been subjected to physical harm, in addition to all losing relatives or homes,’ the organisation said.
It added that nearly 85,000 explosives were dropped over Gaza, with 17 per cent remaining unexploded, leading to the destruction of 80 per cent of total urban infrastructure.
‘Civil Defence headquarters were completely levelled, with 12 administrative vehicles, 11 fire engines, eight ambulances, three rescue and rapid intervention vehicles, and four water tankers also destroyed,’ the statement read.
‘Civil Defence crews are still suffering from a shortage of specialised rescue equipment as well as the unavailability of fuel and spare parts needed to protect lives and property.’
It also renewed its call to international rights groups to deliver more humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip.
The organisation confirmed that at least 10,000 Palestinians remain under the rubble of buildings destroyed by Israeli strikes, and rescuers are unable to get to them due to the ongoing attacks, including the deliberate targeting of Civil Defence crews.
The Civil Defence added that it has observed about 1,760 presumed-dead Palestinians in the besieged enclave whose bodies ‘disintegrated’ due to the use of high-intensity weapons.
Moreover, there are approximately 8,240 people who have been ‘forcibly disappeared’ by the Israeli military, along with about 2,210 bodies that have disappeared from graves across the Gaza Strip, it added.
Israel launched its brutal onslaught on Gaza on October 7th, 2023, after the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas carried out a surprise operation against the usurping entity in retaliation for its intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people for over seven decades.
The ongoing Israeli aggression has so far resulted in 40,939 documented Palestinian fatalities, with over 94,616 others injured.
- Palestinian resistance factions have hailed a ‘heroic’ retaliatory shooting operation near the Allenby Bridge on the border between the occupied West Bank and Jordan in response to Israel’s unending genocidal war on the besieged Gaza Strip.
In a statement on Sunday, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement said: ‘This heroic act is the most genuine expression of the sentiments of the Jordanian people, as well as the Arab and Muslim nations, towards the brutal massacres committed by the enemy.
‘Such heroic operations are the only response understood’ by the United States which has been a partner in Israeli crimes in Gaza and the West Bank.
The Palestinian resistance movement Hamas also described the heroic operation as a ‘natural response’ to the crimes committed by the occupying regime.
At least three Israeli settlers in their 50s were killed in the retaliatory shooting operation near the Allenby Bridge.
Hamas noted that the operation ‘reaffirms the Arab peoples’ rejection of the occupation, its crimes, and its ambitions in Palestine and Jordan,’ adding that it confirms their strong support for the Palestinian resistance.
Hamas further called on all Muslims to rise against Israel’s aggression against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, as well as the regime’s ‘vicious assault’ on civilians in the West Bank.
The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) also said the ‘heroic operation’ confirms that the crimes and massacres committed by the Israeli ‘fascist’ regime against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank have major consequences.
It further warned that the shooting operation was ‘just one episode in a broader series of reactions, which will not cease until the occupying regime withdraws from the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and the legitimate national rights of Palestinian people for freedom, independence, and return are recognised.’
The Israeli military say the assailant arrived at the terminal on the border in a truck from Jordan and opened fire at workers, killing three, at the crossing.
He was then shot dead by Israeli forces, the army added.
Israeli and Jordanian authorities have both announced that the Allenby Bridge crossing has been closed until further notice following the deadly retaliatory shooting incident there.
Jordan has called for a complete arms embargo on Israel. Last week, Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi praised the British government over its decision to partially suspend some arms exports to Israel.
Since Israel unleashed the war on Gaza in early October last year, casualties have been rising in the West Bank as a result of intensified near-daily Israeli raids into villages and cities in the occupied territories.
At least 692 Palestinians, including 158 minors, have been killed in the West Bank by Israeli forces or extremist Jewish settlers since the war began. More than 5,700 Palestinians have been wounded and at least 10,400 detained.
At least 40,939 Palestinians, most of them women and children, have also been killed in Israeli attacks across the Gaza Strip in the regime’s genocidal war.
