EU angered as Israel razes Palestinian school built with European funds

The European Union condemned on Sunday the IDF demolition of an illegal Palestinian school built with its financial assistance in the Gush Etzion region of the West Bank.

“The EU has been following closely this case and has asked the Israeli authorities not to carry out the demolition which directly affects 81 children and their education,” said EU external affairs spokesperson Peter Stano.

Such “demolitions are illegal under international law and children’s right to education must be respected,” he added.

The small narrow one-story school located in the Palestinian village of Jubbet Adh Dib, adjacent to the Herodium National Park was also demolished in 2017 but was then rebuilt.

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The right-wing group Regavim had petitioned the Jerusalem District Court in 2021 against the school. The court ruled that the structure must be razed in early May.

The left-wing group Peace Now said the village itself lacks “basic infrastructure, from electricity connections to public buildings.”

The Civil Administration has in the past rejected the village’s development plans, forcing residents to build without building permits and find alternative sources of electricity, Peace Now explained.

The Office of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories said the building's owner had refused several attempts by Israeli authorities to engage in dialog over the status of the structure before the enforcement of the demolition.

Students and witnesses said the building had been brought to rubble with no trace of the school that once stood there.

"We got ready to come to school and when we arrived we didn't find the school," student Mohammed Ibrahim told Reuters. "We want a school today! We want to study, if they (the IDF) will keep demolishing, we will keep building."

Witnesses also said the contents of the building had been confiscated.

"They demolished the school and they took everything with them," a nearby resident and witness whose grandson was a student at the school Ismael Salah told Reuters. "All the furniture, they put them in trucks and took them."

Israel has often cited a lack of building permits, which Palestinians and rights groups say are nearly impossible to obtain, in destroying Palestinian structures in the West Bank. The EU in the last two decades has funded the construction of such structures as a humanitarian step to help provides Palestinians with housing in the light of the absence of building permits.

It’s a move that has created tension between Brussels and Jerusalem. Stano said that such demolitions “are illegal under international law, and children’s right to education must be respected.” He called on Israel “to halt all demolitions and evictions, which will only increase the suffering of the Palestinian population and risk enflaming tensions on the ground.”

Last year, Stano said, Israel demolished or seized 954 Palestinian structures, both in the West Bank and in east Jerusalem, noting it was the “highest number recorded since 2016.”

The EU’s Representative Office in Jerusalem said it was “appalled” by the demolition explaining that it further escalated an “already tense environment.

Regavim has argued that such construction is part of a Palestinian Authority plan to seize control of Area C to ensure it is included within their state’s future borders.

Reuters contributed to this report.