An Israeli attack on a school for orphans in Gaza City on Wednesday killed several people, mostly children and women, sheltering there after being displaced by previous Israeli strikes.
Late last month, an Israeli attack on a school filled with thousands of displaced Palestinians in northern Gaza killed at least 15 people.
Days earlier, an attack on another school-turned-shelter in Gaza City killed 22 people, mostly women and children, who had sought refuge there. Israeli forces have repeatedly attacked schools, alleging that Hamas uses them as “command centers.” Hamas denies the charges.
Israel is committing “scholasticide,” the deliberate and systematic destruction of the Palestinian education system in Gaza, according to a recent report by the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, a Palestinian advocacy group. Gaza has become the most dangerous place in the world to be a child, according to Unicef.
Over the course of the last year, Israeli attacks have killed or wounded tens of thousands of schoolchildren, university students, and teachers, and Israel has repeatedly bombed schools serving as supposed safe zones for people forced from their homes.
The war in Gaza will set children’s education back by up to five years and risks creating a lost generation of permanently traumatized Palestinian youth, according to another new report from researchers at the University of Cambridge, the Centre for Lebanese Studies, and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (Unrwa).
“The current war in Gaza is unlike any other war in recent times. Current understandings of protracted crises and wars have not encountered a context of multiple displacements, loss of life and injury, and the scale of destruction and damage to civilian infrastructure, including education spaces and learning opportunities as witnessed in Gaza,” reads the study, published last month.
Israeli attacks have killed at least 10,490 school and university students and injured another 16,700, while more than 500 schoolteachers and university educators have also been killed, according to the Al Mezan Center. For almost an entire year, the children of Gaza have been unable to attend school. All educational facilities in Gaza have remained closed, and hundreds of school buildings have been damaged or destroyed.
Josh Paul, who spent more than 11 years as the director of congressional and public affairs at the State Department bureau that oversees arms transfers to foreign nations before resigning in 2023 over US military assistance to Israel, said the attacks were part of an Israeli campaign focused not on defeating Hamas but breaking the will of the Palestinian people.
“The US government is fully aware that the approach Israel has taken since the first week of this war is dismissive of Palestinian humanity and has no regard for the basic standards of international humanitarian law, let alone basic human decency, and yet on we go, supplying the arms that enable this,” he told The Intercept.
Israel has repeatedly used US munitions in attacks on schools in the Gaza Strip. The weapons sales continue.
Late last month, Israel announced it had reached an agreement with the US for an $8.7 billion aid package to support its ongoing military efforts. In August, the Biden administration approved five major arms sales to Israel, including 50 F-15 fighter aircraft, tank ammunition, tactical vehicles, air-to-air missiles, and 50,000 mortar rounds, among other equipment totaling more than $20 billion.
While technically “sales,” the cost of these weapons is mostly paid by the United States since Israel uses much of the military aid Congress approves to buy US-made weapons. The Biden administration has acknowledged the likelihood that Israel has used US weapons in Gaza in violation of international law, but has nonetheless continued the arms transfers.
The US has also quietly backed Israel as it ramped up its war in Lebanon while publicly calling for de-escalation. The US military also assisted Israel in repelling a recent Iranian ballistic missile attack. “Make no mistake, the United States is fully, fully, fully supportive of Israel,” said President Joe Biden.