European-funded school in Ein Samiya community near Ramallah has been targeted by the Israeli occupation's District Court in Jerusalem, which ordered last week the immediate demolition of the latter.

This demolition is threatening the education of Ein Samia al-Badawi community, totaling about 300 people. The school was located in Area C, which means that the territory are under Israeli control. This areas was determined by the 1995 Oslo II Agreements. Those latter established the administrative division of the West Bank into areas A,B and C. Inside the area A, the Palestinian authority has the control, while in area B, the Palestinian authority has only the administrative control but it has to share security control with Israelis authority. Finally, area C is completely under Israeli control and covers 60 percent of the West Bank.

Area C is facing daily issues when it comes to water supply or access to school. On July 28, the Israeli Minister of Education, Shasha-Biton, decided to revoke the licenses of six schools in occupied East Jerusalem with more than 2,000 students, "on the background of incitement against Israel in textbooks," according to a ministry statement at the time.

The closure of the Ein Samiya school is a case in point of current issues that Palestinian citizens living in area C are facing. A petition has been submitted by the lawyers for the Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Center’s on behalf of the land donor, a resident of Ramallah’s Kafr Malik town, against the court’s decision issued on April 28 to demolish the school.

In response to the petition, the court has issued two options : either to carry out self-demolition on a specific date, or for the demolition to be carried out by the occupation’s bulldozers. The Palestinian Prime Minister reacted to this decision : "We reject the (Israeli) occupation's decision to demolish the Ein Samia school, which is a form of war on Palestinian identity," Shtayyeh said at a ceremony for high school students in Ramallah".

European Union (EU) representatives, ambassadors and consuls organised a visit on Friday to the Ein Samiya Bedouin school east of Ramallah to protest the decision by the Israeli court in Jerusalem to demolish it immediately. The school has just opened in in mid-January in coordination with the Ministry of Education, the Committee to Resist the Wall and Settlement and with European funding. (PNN wrote an article about it last week : http://english.pnn.ps/2022/08/12/heads-of-eu-mission-and-likeminded-countries-visit-ein-samiya-school-under-imminent-threat-of-demolition/ )