Ramallah – Together – The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor condemned in the strongest terms the Israeli army’s insistence on militarizing civilian objects, including converting schools and educational facilities into military bases, as part of its ongoing military attack for the seventh month on the Gaza Strip, in flagrant violation of international law and the rules of war, and an extension of the colonial legacy. Based on hegemony and the dismantling of the authentic and basic components of peoples, especially cultural and educational, and as is still happening now by the governments of Western countries against the rising student protest movement in major international universities to demand an end to the crime of genocide against Palestinian civilians.
Euro-Med said that the Israeli army was not content with its systematic and widespread targeting of schools with bombing and massive destruction, and committed serious crimes against the people protected inside them, and directly and deliberately t
argeted them with air and ground military operations, and murders and direct unlawful executions of civilians who had fled to those schools, but rather it transferred a number Including military bases, the positioning of its forces and vehicles, detention and interrogation centers, and violations of torture, in contravention of the rules of international humanitarian law established to protect civilian objects from the danger of military operations, and also violates the obligations imposed on Israel, as the occupying power, under the Fourth Geneva Convention, to take all necessary measures. To ensure the education of children, orphans, and children separated from their parents due to war.
The Observatory documented many schools in various areas of the Gaza Strip that the Israeli army turned into military bases and detention centers during its field invasion of most areas of the Strip, including the ‘Salah al-Din Preparatory School’ in Gaza City, which was turned into a detention and interrogation center for
hundreds of residents last February. .
The Observatory referred to what was published on April 30 by the Israeli journalist ‘Amir Bohbut’ of a video clip in which he appears documenting a military base established by the Israeli army inside a school in the Gaza Strip. He accompanied it with a voiceover: ‘We are in a forward operations base belonging to the 162nd Division in the heart of the Gaza Strip.’ He then showed containers placed in the middle of the school yard. He said they had been converted into offices and bedrooms, adding, “From here, raids, ambushes, and other operations will begin.”
Previously, soldiers from the ‘Givati’ battalion in the Israeli army published a group photo of themselves with their weapons and full military equipment inside a school, and the flag of the division and Israel were placed prominently behind them, in addition to publishing pictures of sniper soldiers shooting from inside schools, some of which belong to the United Nations.
Euro-Med also viewed several video clips
published by Israeli soldiers in which they brag about taking control of schools after raiding them and forcing the displaced people to evacuate them by force after killing, wounding, and arresting thousands of them. Among them is a video of an Israeli army soldier documenting what he wrote in Hebrew and Ukrainian, a message to his mother that he was in Gaza on the blackboard of one of the classrooms inside a school. Soldiers had previously posted on social media clips of themselves stationed inside classrooms and vandalizing some of them, including a group of soldiers boasting about bombing a United Nations school.
The Euro-Mediterranean Observatory highlighted that Israel completely or partially destroyed 80% of the schools in the Gaza Strip in its military attack since the 7th of last October, which United Nations experts described in a joint statement issued on the 18th of last April, as representing educational genocide and depriving a generation. Another of the Palestinians from their future.
He point
ed out that even the schools run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), which were turned into shelter centers for hundreds of thousands of forcibly displaced civilians, were and are still being subjected to intense Israeli attacks – some of them repeatedly and at sporadic periods – including in areas that the Israeli army announced It is rated “safe”.
Since the launch of its military attack, the Israeli army has placed about 246 square kilometers, equivalent to about 67% of the area of ??the Gaza Strip, under illegal evacuation orders from the Israeli army. This includes all areas north of the Gaza Valley, whose residents were ordered to evacuate in late October, in addition to specific areas south of the Gaza Valley that the Israeli army has ordered to evacuate successively since last December 1.
It is estimated that more than 6,500 students and 756 teachers were killed and thousands more injured in the Israeli military attack on the Gaza Strip until mid-April, while
the numbers increase every day, and at least 625,000 students continue to be deprived of their right to education over the course of a full academic year. . Six universities were also destroyed, one of which was bombed weeks after it was used as an army military base (Al-Isra University).
The Observatory drew attention to the statements of the head of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Ajith Songai, in which he said that the educational system in Gaza ‘no longer exists at this stage,’ with schools being used as shelters or destroyed in Israeli bombing operations. There is no longer room for children to learn.
Euro-Med documented in a report on December 13 that the Israeli army turned schools used as shelters by tens of thousands of displaced people into military centers and field executions. At the time, the Observatory published testimonies about Israeli army forces carrying out field executions and unjustified killings against Palesti
nian civilians after detaining them for days inside schools to which they had sought refuge.
The testimonies showed horrific human atrocities and unjustified killings of civilians after their release, which indicates that there was no reason to shoot and kill them, including the discovery of about 15 decomposed bodies of dead Palestinians. It was clear from the initial examination of them that they had been subjected to field executions during They were interrogated by the Israeli army at the Shadia Abu Ghazaleh government school in the Al-Fallujah area, west of the Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip, after the army’s military vehicles withdrew from the school.
Last March, about a hundred distinguished European academics condemned, in a petition launched by the Euro-Mediterranean Observatory, the crime of genocide committed by Israel against civilians in Gaza and its deliberate liquidation of them physically and culturally, including targeting and systematic destruction of the educational syste
m in the Strip.
Euro-Med stressed the importance of protecting schools during the military attacks launched by Israel against the Gaza Strip, and the need for the international community to put pressure on Israel to stop its military operations against and inside schools in the Strip, as this is an indispensable necessity to guarantee the right of Palestinian children to education, and to ensure their return to their schools. As quickly as possible, despite the enormous need for repair and reconstruction of these schools, verify the absence of weapons and military equipment before this school can be used again safely.
Euro-Med reminds the international community of the catastrophic conditions in which children live in the Gaza Strip, who are essentially considered one of the most vulnerable groups in times of armed conflict. Today, they are suffering more from the consequences of the ongoing Israeli military attack on the Strip, and they no longer enjoy any type of protection assigned to them. Under interna
tional law, they have become direct and deliberate targets of murders, executions, and deliberate and indiscriminate targeting carried out by the Israeli army, in addition to being victims of crimes of starvation, siege, deprivation of health care and basic survival necessities, and deprivation of education for long periods, which will affect their ability to enjoy their other rights and make them They are more vulnerable to poverty, unemployment and exploitation, in addition to the danger of depriving generations of education on rebuilding Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip after the end of the Israeli military attack.
The Euro-Mediterranean Monitor renewed its demand for the necessity of enabling investigation committees and specialized technical committees to enter the Gaza Strip and investigate the horrific crimes committed by Israel, and hold it accountable for its relentless violations of the International Convention to Prevent and Punish the Crime of Genocide through the collective targeting of the
residents of the Gaza Strip because they are Palestinians, including the approach of killing and physical abuse. And mental and undermining the basics of living conditions for survival and imposing forced displacement through crushing and militarizing civilian objects.
Source: Maan News Agency