Targeting Palestinian children is necessary for Israeli settler colonialism
On April 12, Israeli settler militias erected an iron fence, blocking a road used by students from Khirbet Umm al-Khair, south of Hebron (Masafer Yatta), to reach their school. For over 40 years, students have walked this mountain route to school.
Israel is preventing at least 55 Palestinian students from their right to education. With its logic of elimination as a settler-colonial power, Israel aims to ensure that the next generation will no longer resist dispossession and oppression, and abandon claims to their rights. With every generation of insurgent indigenous people, the focus by the colonial powers on the destruction and/or control of education, childhood, and childbirth grows.
Palestinians Resist
Students accompanied by teachers and family members have been staging daily sit-ins to protest Israel’s blockade of their education, turning the fenced area into an informal outdoor classroom which the community has named “Umm Al-Kheir’s Freedom School”. In one of the sit-ins, one teacher taught the children about the meaning of the right to education and the history of groups who have been denied that same right and about the importance of fighting for it.
Israel’s restrictions on education impact students, families and teachers. Awdah Hathaleen, was an English teacher that students are commemorating and singing songs about while protesting. In July 2025, a settler named Yinon Levi shot and killed Awdah. The community says the settlers responsible for erecting the fence are from a nearby outpost that was established days after Awdah was killed. Now, Awdah’s 5 year old son, was one of the children tear gassed during one of the demonstrations.
On April 21, settler militias opened fire on Al-Mughayyir Boys School in a coordinated attack with the occupation force and started beating parents who rushed to evacuate their children. The settlers and army have killed one of those parents, Jihad Marzouq Abu Naim.
They also killed a 14 year old student, Aws Hamdi al-Na’san, with a bullet in his head. Aws’ father was also killed by settlers seven years ago.
A day after Jihad and Aws were killed, Israeli occupation forces attacked mourners attending their funeral in the village of Al-Mughayyir, northeast of Ramallah. Palestinian of Al-Mughayyir defended the funeral, confronted the occupation forces, and managed to complete the funeral procession with a large crowd.
Occupation Through Education
On April 20, in occupied Jerusalem, in the heart of the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, the Israeli colonial government approved the construction of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish religious school. The decision is the latest chapter in a decades-long campaign. Occupation authorities seized the land years ago and handed it in 2007 to the US-linked Or Somayach Institutions.
Israel’s Attack on UNRWA and Palestinian’s Right of Return
This decision comes only months after the Israeli government closed six UNRWA schools in Jerusalem, demolished the UNRWA headquarters in Sheikh Jarrah, and closed 10 UNRWA schools in Jenin, Tulkarem, and Nur Shams refugee camps.
On April 26, UNRWA announced that it is reducing its operating hours in the occupied West Bank from five to four school days, reducing the working hours of its employees by 20%, terminating working contracts of many employees.
The Israeli-EU Epistemicide Structure
As of April 30, 2026, the European Parliament approved a decision to freeze funding for the Palestinian education sector as part of the European Union’s annual budget review mechanism. This marks the seventh consecutive year the Parliament has taken such action.
Israel, as the occupying colonial power, influences international donors, on whom the Palestinian Ministry of Education heavily depends, to financially pressure the Palestinian Authority into altering its curriculum to align with a Zionist-Israeli narrative and undermine the Palestinian people’s collective national identity.
Epistemicide refers to the destruction of knowledge systems, a process central to European colonization that established European knowledge as dominant while forcing colonized societies to rebuild their systems under conditions that reinforced colonial power and limited their liberation.