Israel seizes UNRWA’s last working college in East Jerusalem

Israeli forces took control of the Qalandia Training Centre on Tuesday, emptied the staff and ordered them not to return. The compound, opened in 1952, was the last UNRWA facility still running in occupied East Jerusalem. It trained about 270 to 340 Palestinians a year in trades such as carpentry, vehicle repair and plumbing, and sat between Kafr Aqab and Qalandia refugee camp, on the far side of the separation barrier from central Jerusalem.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir joined the raid and posted a video of himself in the director’s chair. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the evacuation followed his directive and the October 2024 laws that ban UNRWA from operating in territory Israel controls. The office repeated the government’s charge that the agency was involved in the 7 October 2023 attacks, a charge UNRWA denies. Ambassador Danny Danon wrote to Secretary-General Antonio Guterres that the agency has no property rights to the site and that Israel had given prior notice to leave.

UN spokesman Stéphane Dujarric said Tuesday’s entry was the fifth unauthorised incursion at the centre since May. He listed earlier seizures, including the Sheikh Jarrah compound, and the cutting of water and power to other UNRWA buildings in East Jerusalem. Under international law, he said, UN premises are inviolable. Guterres condemned the raid. Adnan Abu Hasna of UNRWA told Al Jazeera that the agency had not been told in advance and that lowering the UN flag at the site was a break with practice.

On Wednesday the Jerusalem Governorate said troops had been reinforced overnight and that municipal crews had started “maintenance and renovation” work. Local officials say the plan is to turn the grounds into a municipal school complex. Doing that, UNRWA says, would require demolishing most of the existing workshops. Five Palestinians were reported wounded by gunfire near the site during the Tuesday operation. Forces also moved through Qalandia camp and Kafr Aqab with searches and field interrogations.

The geography is the policy. Qalandia sits at the northern gate of Jerusalem. Israel has already taken land from the village for the Atarot industrial zone and a military base. A larger plan described by Palestinian officials would put 7,000 to 9,000 housing units on the old airport lands next to the training centre, plus a heritage site in the former terminal. Taking the UN compound removes an international flag from a plot that those plans treat as available ground.

The students are the other half of the story. Because the centre sits behind the barrier, young people from West Bank camps could reach it without crossing into the city proper. Close it, and that vocational route closes with it. Replacing the seats inside an Israeli municipal school does not replace access for the same cohort.

Israel’s legal position is that UNRWA’s mandate in Jerusalem ended when the Knesset banned the agency, and that the land can be reused for Israeli public education. The UN’s legal position is that a national statute cannot cancel the immunities of a General Assembly body. Those two sentences will now be argued in diplomatic notes, in donor capitals and, if anyone files, in court. On the ground the flag has already changed and the workshops are empty.