Israeli soldiers broke into a Palestinian elementary school in Beitunia, near Ramallah, and prevented students and teachers from leaving it, the official Palestinian news agency WAFA reported.
Local sources told WAFA that Israeli occupation forces stormed the Al-Kurom elementary school and held Palestinian students and teachers at gunpoint, threatening to shoot whoever tried to leave the school.
Israel’s attacks on Palestinian education are a daily routine in the occupied West Bank. These include Isreali military raids in schools, harassment, arrest, and assault of children.
They also include demolitions of schools and confiscation of equipment – many of which a refunded by the European Union and European governments.
“Israel’s strategy in destroying the infrastructure of the Palestinian schooling system is a brutal logic, that has guided the Israeli government strategy regarding Palestinian education for 70 years,” wrote Palestinian journalist and editor of The Palestine Chronicle Ramzy Baroud.
“It is a war,” Baroud added, “that cannot be discussed or understood outside the larger war on Palestinian identity, freedom, and, in fact, the very existence of the Palestinian people.”
(PC, WAFA)