A boy stands outside the gate of the Kalandia Vocational Training Centre (KTC), run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), which was raided by Israeli forces earlier at the Qalandia camp for Palestinian refugees in the occupied West Bank. AFP
Israel has severed all ties with the agency, known as UNRWA, and bars it from operating in its territory. It claims the agency allowed itself to be infiltrated by Hamas in the Gaza Strip, allegations denied by U.N. officials.
UNRWA said police entered a training centre by force on Tuesday, firing tear gas and sound grenades and ordering its evacuation.
It said 350 students and 30 staff were present during the raid on the Qalandiya Training Center.
It said police and city officials ordered the closure of three other schools in east Jerusalem, two of which proceeded with the school day.
Israeli police spokesman Dean Elsdunne said police did not enter the U.N. buildings and that Jerusalem municipal authorities carried out the closures.
He said police were deployed to protect the city workers, using “riot dispersal” means in one case where a crowd threw stones at them outside a U.N. facility.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the raids were “a clear violation of Israel’s obligations under international law.”
Earlier this February, Israeli police raided a long-established Palestinian-owned bookstore in east Jerusalem, detaining the owners and confiscating books about the decades-long conflict.
The Educational Bookshop, established over 40 years ago, is a hub of intellectual life in east Jerusalem, which Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war and annexed to its capital in a move not recognized internationally. Most of the city's Palestinian population lives in east Jerusalem, and the Palestinians want it to be the capital of their future state.
The three-story bookstore that was raided on Sunday has a large selection of books, mainly in Arabic and English, about the conflict and the wider Middle East, including many by Israeli and Jewish authors. It hosts cultural events and is especially popular among researchers, journalists and foreign diplomats.
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