Loowit Morrison for Amnesty Menton
November
“[A] new way has been found to kill children.”
Such was the remark on the Israeli Knesset’s October 28th decision to ban operations of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), from James Elder, UNRWA spokesperson.
The parliamentary decision moved to ban the UNRWA’s operations within Israel, including occupied East Jerusalem, where the organization’s headquarters lie, as well as eliminating contact between Israeli authorities and the UNRWA. Justified by Israel on the grounds of terrorist involvement in the agency, this decision threatens the UNRWA’s humanitarian operations, which include healthcare and infrastructure development, social services, loans, and more, to Palestinian refugees.
An especially crucial responsibility of the UNRWA is providing Palestinians with primary and vocational education. The agency offers free basic education to approximately 550,000 Palestinian refugee children, including almost 300,000 in Gaza and 46,000 in the West Bank. They also assist child refugees in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. This education is key to providing children with hope and stability, nurturing a new generation of Palestinians. According to United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, the October 28th decision poses an acute threat to these efforts, potentially resulting in the breakdown not only of education systems for 650,000 Palestinian children but the peace process as a whole.
The banning of UNRWA is only one example of the destruction of educational systems in Palestine, a process which has been conceptualized as “scholasticide”. Initially defined by Karma Nabulsi, Oxford University Professor of Political Science and International Relations, during the assault on Gaza in 2008-2009, scholasticide refers to the “willful demolition of educational infrastructure.” The term includes an array of aggressions, including the killing of teachers and students, mental harm to students, physical demolition of educational buildings and materials, obstruction of rebuilding efforts, prevention of scholarly exchange and more. It has also been extended to the destruction of archives, libraries, museums, and other sites of cultural heritage, assaulting efforts to maintain Palestinian culture, history or identity in an attempt at cultural erasure.
The relationship between scholasticide and the war on Gaza could not be more evident. It fundamentally lies at the core of Israel’s destructive strategies against Palestinians. A report from Scholars Against the War on Palestine holds that during the war on Gaza, scholasticide has grown exponentially, expanding from physical attacks on schools to a “total annihilation of education.”
Scholasticide has manifested itself in Gaza in a myriad of ways, through the physical damage of buildings, the deaths of students and teachers, the growth of learning poverty, and the destruction of constructive educational curricula.
A September report from the UNRWA, Cambridge University, and the Centre for Lebanese Studies highlights the threat of the ongoing war on education and its potential to create a “lost generation” of traumatized children. The study projects that under current conditions, education could be set back by five years.
According to a prior report from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in August, over 10,600 children and 400 teachers have been killed thus far in the war, and an additional 15,300 students and 2,400 teachers have been injured. This killing and maiming of children is a blatant violation of International Humanitarian Law. Furthermore, a UNRWA report has estimated that over ten children per day have lost one or both of their legs, underlining the rise of disabilities among Palestinian children. This concern, coupled with the destruction of medical care, counseling and support systems in schools, will cause children with disabilities to face even more barriers to education during and after the war.
Damage to physical buildings cannot be ignored. As of early September, 92% of all school buildings in Gaza were demolished or damaged, and every university had been destroyed. Satellite images from the Occupied Palestinian Territory Education Cluster have verified the extent of damage, which continues to grow by the day. This development means that even when the combat ends, children will not have a school to return to.
“Learning poverty”, or the inability to read a basic text by age ten, has skyrocketed in Gaza over the past 14 months, increasing by at least 20%. Already disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, lost learning in Gaza poses an urgent threat.
Not only is scholasticide in Gaza affecting concrete educational qualities for children, such as literacy, but it also carries dire psychological consequences. Traumatized and lacking adequate educational and emotional support, Gazan children are losing faith in concepts such as human rights, equality and tolerance. A humanitarian aid official remarked that “it will take a generation to overcome” this trauma, severely setting back educational efforts.
The destruction of educational institutions in Gaza, coupled with the deprioritization of education and the lackluster efforts to rebuild schools, will have consequences that last for years to come. UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini has stated that the neglect of education will “sow the seeds for future hatred and extremism,” leading children to fall victim to exploitation and armed groups. Children in Gaza are not shown empathy, respect for human rights and hope, and without schools to convey these crucial values, children cannot learn them. This trend would not only threaten the rights of Palestinian children today but global stability and international humanitarian efforts as a whole.
For years, Palestine has prided itself in its educational systems, investing in academic institutions with the hopes of sowing the seeds of progress. During the First Intifada, Palestine experienced an “educational revolution,” seeing mass efforts to promote popular education. Education, to Palestinians, was, and still is, a form of resistance to attacks on their identity. Israeli efforts to block education have been linked with attempts to suppress this Palestinian intellectual development, perpetuate dependency upon Israel and block the spread of a Palestinian narrative. By attacking schools and organizations such as the UNRWA, Israel aims to set Palestine’s educational efforts, which they prize so greatly, back to an underdeveloped stage.
The right to education is enshrined in the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and even during wartime, under the Fourth Geneva Convention. Why, then, is the world turning a blind eye as schools in Gaza crumble, students are targeted and entire institutions collapse? The gradual normalization of educational violence is deeply troubling, highlighting a deeper decay of global values and human rights. Children’s rights are being increasingly ignored, pushed aside as less important than other issues. Education is simply not considered relevant enough in discussions of humanitarian needs, a neglect that ignores the glaring manifestations of educational violence used to further wartime means. In Gaza, Israel has purposefully targeted education to further displace and marginalize Palestinians. This conflict isn’t the only example of scholasticide; in fact, attacks on education represent a growing military tactic worldwide. A report from the Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack found that in 2022 and 2023, incidents that targeted education and the military use of schools worldwide increased by nearly 20%, as compared with the previous two years. In sum, there were roughly 6,000 attacks on educators, schools and universities, averaging at eight attacks per day.
Over 625,000 children still live in Gaza. Nonetheless, their rights, including those to education, are consistently pushed aside and ignored in discussions among experts and politicians. We are slowly “accepting the unacceptable,” says Sonia Ben Jaafar of Al Jazeera, referring to the troubling normalization of violence committed against children and their education. The international community has chosen to turn its backs on Palestinian children—their lives are targeted, their schools are destroyed and any humanitarian efforts to aid them are blocked. Scholasticide is bleeding into Gaza in a multitude of faucets, posing an immediate and dire threat to the livelihoods of Palestinian children today, tomorrow and for years to come.