Over 620,000 Palestinian students denied education due to Israeli attacks: UN

GAZA: The United Nations has warned that over 620,000 Palestinian students have been left with no access to education as 85 per cent of school buildings in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed amid Israeli attacks, leaving them with no school to attend in the new semester started on Monday.

In addition, at least nearly 30,000 students and educators have been killed or injured in the war-torn enclave since the latest round of the Israel-Hamas conflict erupted on October 7 last year, said the UN.

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A report released recently by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) showed that about 625,000 students in the Gaza Strip have been denied their right to education.

As of August 27, at least 9,839 students and 411 education workers in the besieged enclave had been killed by Israel’s continuing bombardment, and at least 15,394 students and 2,411 education workers had been wounded, the report said.

In July, 85 per cent of Gaza’s school buildings, or 477 out of 564, had been directly attacked or damaged, and that those buildings are in need of major renovation or complete reconstruction, the report said.

Data released by the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) showed that about half of the students without access to formal education used to attend 284 schools operated by the agency, but these schools have been forced to close due to the war, and many of them have been frequently attacked by Israeli forces.

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Some 6,000 Palestinian school-age children in the West Bank, including Tulkarem and Jenin, have also been directly affected by the current conflict, showed UNRWA data.

As hundreds of thousands of Gazan students have lost the opportunity to return to school for the new semester, which began on Monday, the Palestinian authorities and UN agencies said they are making efforts to create conditions for these children to get education.

The Palestinian Ministry of Education said on Sunday that the students have the right to education and it is working to provide online classes to students in the Gaza Strip despite repeated Israeli attacks, while providing offline classes in tents as much as possible.

The Palestinian official news agency WAFA reported on the same day that a number of Palestinian educational organizations and institutions issued a joint statement, appealing to the international community and the United Nations to take action to protect the Palestinian education sector from Israeli attacks.

The statement also called for an immediate ceasefire and the rebuilding of educational facilities in the Gaza Strip.

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UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said on Sunday on social media that the physical and psychological damage caused by the latest conflict will take a long time to overcome.

He said UNRWA teams are working to enable all children to go back to school. Education cannot be taken away. Children and their learning must always be protected, he wrote.