Israel’s Bloody Record of Bombing Schools in Gaza

Israel keeps bombing schools.

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, or 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, which 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 U.S. 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 U.S. 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 U.S. 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 U.S. 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 U.S.-made weapons. The Biden administration has acknowledged the likelihood that Israel has used U.S. weapons in Gaza in violation of international law, but has nonetheless continued the arms transfers.

The U.S. has also quietly backed Israel as it ramped up its war in Lebanon while publicly calling for de-escalation. The U.S. 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.

Most school buildings in Gaza have been turned into shelters housing internally displaced persons. The attacks on them have been relentless.

In one week in August, a school was bombed daily. “In the past seven days, Israel has attacked at least seven schools in Gaza — one per day — including Al-Zahra School, Abdel Fattah Hammoud School, Al-Nasr and Hassan Salama schools, and Al-Huda School,” Action For Humanity, a United Kingdom-based NGO working in Gaza, announced in a press release. “Each of these schools were crowded with displaced civilians.”

Attacks on schools are one of six grave violations against children identified and condemned by the U.N. Security Council. 

In an increasing number of school attacks, evidence of the use of U.S. munitions has been discovered at the site. In May, for example, an unexploded GBU-39 — a small-diameter, precision-guided, American-made bomb — was found at a school in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip. That same month, a strike using a U.S. munition, on a family home and a school in Nuseirat, killed as many as 30 people. In June, a GBU-39 was used in a strike on a United Nations school that was sheltering displaced Palestinians. At least 40 people were killed in the attack, according to medical personnel at the nearby Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital. 

In August, more than 90 Palestinians were killed in an Israeli strike on a school and mosque in Gaza City sheltering displaced people. At least one U.S.-made bomb was used in the attack.

The August 4 attack on Hassan Salama school in Gaza City, which was functioning as a shelter for displaced people at the time, killed at least 30 people, left at least 14 more buried under the rubble, and injured dozens more, according to first responders and local news sources. After the initial strike, more than three missiles struck the area in a “double tap” attack, according to Mahmoud Basal, a spokesperson for Gaza Civil Defense. A U.S.-made F-16 fighter was involved in the attack, which also damaged the neighboring Al-Nasr school, he said.

“The first bombing was unexpected and resulted in a large number of martyrs and injured individuals,” according to Basal. “While the martyrs and injured were being retrieved, the occupation forces issued a warning that another strike was imminent.” Most, of the victims, he said, were women and children. The Israeli military claimed it took “numerous steps to mitigate the risk of harming civilians” before the strike without offering specifics and claimed the attack targeted “terrorists” in “Hamas command and control centers” located in the two schools.

Following the spate of school bombings in August, the Switzerland-based Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor called out Israel for its attempts to justify the attacks and disputed claims of military necessity. “Initial investigations by Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor’s field team indicate that the Israeli army deliberately destroyed the remaining shelter centers to deny Palestinians the few remaining places to seek refuge after the systematic destruction of homes and shelters, including schools,” the group charged.

The U.N. Human Rights Office also expressed horror at the “unfolding pattern of the Israeli Defense Force strikes on schools in Gaza killing internally displaced Palestinians seeking shelter there.” In a press release, the office addressed the tension between Israel’s contention that Hamas was present at schools serving as shelters for displaced civilians and the protections afforded to noncombatants under international law.

“While the collocation by armed groups of military objectives with civilians or the use of the presence of civilians with the objective of shielding a military objective from attack constitute violations of International Humanitarian Law, it does not negate Israel’s obligation to comply strictly with International Humanitarian Law, including the principles of proportionality, distinction and precaution when carrying out military operations,” the U.N. Human Rights Office announced. “Israel, as the occupying power, is also obliged to provide the evacuated populations with basic humanitarian needs, including safe shelter.”

All told, most school buildings in the Gaza Strip — at least 477 of 564, or 85 percent — have been damaged or destroyed since last October. Rehabilitating or rebuilding them will be an expensive, time-intensive process, meaning it could take years before they are usable again. The value of the damaged educational structures, alone, is estimated at more than $340 million. But making Gaza livable, again, for children and families could cost far more than $80 billion, according to Daniel Egel, a senior economist at the RAND Corporation, a U.S. military-sired, California-based think tank who also cited the incalculable costs. “You can rebuild a building, but how do you rebuild the lives of a million children?” he told Bloomberg.

Since early October 2023, 625,000 children enrolled in schools across Gaza have had no access to education.

“The war has severely impacted children in Gaza, where every second person is a child,” said Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general of UNRWA, in August. “Nearly 70 percent of UNRWA schools have been hit, highlighting the blatant disregard for international humanitarian law. Ninety-five percent of these schools were being used as shelters for displaced people when they were hit.”

UNICEF reported at least 19,000 children have been separated from their parents since October 2023, as 9 in 10 Gazans have been internally displaced, and some have been forced to move ten or more times in the past year. But even children still with their families have seen their lives thrown into chaos.

“My daily routine involves standing in line for many hours to get water for my family and then carrying it back to our tent,” a fifth-grade student who formerly attended an UNRWA school told the Al Mezan Center. “I used to keep my books with me, hoping to return to school one day. However, I lost them while constantly moving from one place to another.”

Extended educational disruptions can lead to stunted cognitive, social, and emotional development. Farid Abu Athra, the chief of UNRWA’s education program in Gaza, warned the Al Mezan Center of the increased likelihood of dropout, child labor, and early marriage due to children being out of school.

Even before the start of the current war, an estimated 800,000 children in Gaza — about 75 percent of its entire child population — were already in need of mental health and psychosocial support. The conflict has exposed children in Gaza to severe psychosocial distress and, as a result, UNICEF estimates that more than 1 million children, effectively every child in Gaza, now needs such services. For children, the intense stress and trauma of war — exposure to deaths, injuries, violence, family separation, displacement, and economic hardship — can alter their brains, potentially contributing to anxiety disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and other psychological issues. Children who have experienced conflict or displacement report anxiety, insomnia, nightmares, and panic attacks.

The State Department acknowledged receipt of questions from The Intercept about the Al Mezan Center’s claim that Israel is committing “scholasticide” in Gaza and the use of U.S. munitions in attacks on schools in early September but did not provide any answers prior to publication. The department also declined an interview request to discuss the same subject.

“Since the war began, human rights groups have documented horrifying attacks by Israel that have credibly raised allegations of violations of international humanitarian law,” Seth Binder of the Washington-based Middle East Democracy Center told The Intercept.

“Even the United States has acknowledged that there have been violations” of international humanitarian law, Binder said, including with U.S. arms. “Yet, despite all of this, the administration has continued near unconditional support for Israel with billions in arms transfers, ignoring both international law, and U.S. law and policy, which should trigger arms suspensions. Ultimately, the unfathomable suffering of the Palestinian people in Gaza over the last twelve months will have vast and lasting consequences, not only for those Palestinians in Gaza, but for Israel, the region, and the world.”