Large Israeli police forces stormed the UNRWA vocational training center in the Qalandiya area of occupied Jerusalem on Tuesday, expelling its employees and shutting it down, in the seventh raid on the site in recent months and the culmination of Israel's campaign to dismantle the UN agency for Palestinian refugees in the city. The center in Kafr Aqab was the last UNRWA facility still operating in occupied Jerusalem, providing vocational training to hundreds of young Palestinians from refugee camps across the occupied West Bank in fields such as carpentry and auto electrics.
Far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who holds a criminal record for incitement to racism and support for a terrorist organization, personally joined the raid, arriving with a crew from the pro-government Channel 14 to stage the closure as a media spectacle. He declared that the raid was intended to shut the facility down permanently and that authorities would begin removing its equipment. The storming came just one day after diplomats from 24 countries, including Germany, Spain, Japan, Switzerland, Britain, Turkey, and Poland, had visited the compound, an act of open defiance that underscored Israel's determination to target the UN agency regardless of international attention.
War criminal Benjamin Netanyahu claimed the operation as his own, saying Israel had begun evacuating the UNRWA compound in Kafr Aqab on his instructions and in continuation of the law his government had passed against the agency. The Jerusalem occupation municipality announced that the site would undergo rapid renovations and reopen the following week as a boys' high school teaching the Israeli curriculum, rather than the Palestinian curriculum used in UNRWA schools and most schools in occupied Jerusalem. The municipality said it intended to expropriate the land, a 90-dunam compound that UNRWA officials say is leased from the Jordanian government, and to build an Israeli educational campus on it.
The raid unfolded amid a wider Israeli assault on the area. Israeli forces stormed the Qalandiya refugee camp and the town of Kafr Aqab alongside the seizure of the training center.
Palestinian factions and officials condemned the seizure in the strongest terms. Hamas denounced the storming of the Qalandiya institute, the detention and interrogation of its employees, and the raising of the occupation flag in its courtyard, describing it as a dangerous escalation against UNRWA and the rights of the Palestinian people, and a challenge to international resolutions. The movement said carrying out the raid immediately after a visit by diplomatic missions confirmed Israel's insistence on targeting the UN agency, and demanded the United Nations and the international community take practical measures to protect UNRWA.
The Palestinian presidency in Ramallah said the targeting of UN premises in the occupied Palestinian territory was a grave escalation and a serious violation of international law that could not be met with silence, and called for the UN Security Council to convene and adopt binding measures to stop Israel's attacks on UN facilities, including UNRWA. Fatah condemned the continued Israeli aggression against the agency, the raid on the Qalandiya camp and Kafr Aqab, and the seizure of the training center, calling the targeting of UNRWA a direct blow to the Palestinian refugee cause and an attempt to destroy one of the most important international institutions. It urged the Security Council, the General Assembly, the UN secretary-general, and member states to act urgently.
UNRWA itself unequivocally condemned what it called an unauthorized and deeply concerning incursion, stressing that the center is a United Nations facility protected by the privileges and immunities afforded to the organization under international law, and that its inviolability must be fully respected. The agency called on the international community to protect the sanctity of the Qalandiya training center.
The seizure is the latest step in a systematic Israeli campaign to erase UNRWA from occupied Jerusalem. Since two laws banning the agency from operating in Israel and barring official contact with it took effect in early 2025, Israeli occupation forces have raided and shut down UNRWA's headquarters, schools, clinics, offices, and warehouses across occupied Jerusalem, cutting off services to Palestinian refugees, including sewage and garbage collection in the Shuafat refugee camp that the agency had provided since the 1960s.
