Built to Learn, Ordered to Fall: Area C School Demolition and Palestinian Children
In the rocky hillside communities scattered across Area C of the occupied West Bank — the roughly 60 percent of West Bank land under full Israeli civil and military control — going to school can mean sitting inside a structure that carries its own demolition order. For Palestinian children in herding and Bedouin communities, the classroom itself is precarious: built with international funding, sometimes constructed from salvaged tires and mud, and perpetually exposed to Israeli Civil Administration enforcement that can arrive without warning and reduce a school to rubble in a single morning.
According to OCHA oPt, the Israeli authorities require Palestinian construction in Area C — including schools, water cisterns, and shelters — to obtain permits through a planning system that, in practice, approves almost no Palestinian applications. OCHA’s Protection of Civilians reporting has consistently documented that the near-total denial of building permits forces communities to construct without authorization or go without infrastructure entirely. Schools built under those conditions then become targets for demolition and stop-work orders.
Khan al-Ahmar: The Tire School That Became a Symbol
No school in Area C has attracted more sustained international attention than the structure in Khan al-Ahmar, a Bedouin community of the Jahalin tribe located between Jerusalem and Jericho along the road to the Ma’ale Adumim settlement bloc. The school — built in 2009 with support from an Italian humanitarian organization, its walls made partly from compacted rubber tires plastered with mud — serves children from Khan al-Ahmar and neighboring communities who have no other local option.
Israeli authorities issued demolition orders against the school and the broader community of Khan al-Ahmar on the grounds that the structures lacked permits — permits the Civil Administration has never made available to this community. The Israeli Supreme Court ruled in 2018 that the demolition of the entire village, including the school, could proceed lawfully. That ruling drew condemnation from the United Nations, the European Union, and a range of human rights organizations. UNICEF oPt warned that demolition would deprive dozens of children of their only nearby school and contribute to forced displacement of the community.
As of the most recent reporting periods, Khan al-Ahmar has not been demolished — sustained international diplomatic pressure has delayed enforcement — but the demolition orders remain legally standing. The community, and the tire school, exist in a condition of permanent legal jeopardy.
Ein Samiya and the Pattern of Donor-Funded Schools Destroyed
Khan al-Ahmar is not an isolated case. The herding community of Ein Samiya, in the central West Bank hills northeast of Ramallah, faced the dismantling of structures including educational spaces despite international donor involvement in their construction. OCHA oPt’s Education Cluster updates have tracked a broader pattern: across Area C, structures funded by European governments and humanitarian organizations — prefabricated classrooms, learning tents, and permanent school buildings — have been demolished or confiscated by Israeli authorities.
The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) has documented cases in which classroom structures it helped finance were subsequently issued demolition orders or physically removed. NRC’s reporting describes communities forced into cycles of reconstruction: a classroom is built, demolished, rebuilt with fresh donor funds, and demolished again. Save the Children Palestine has similarly reported on the psychological toll this cycle inflicts on children, for whom the destruction of their school compounds the broader instability of life under occupation in Area C.
OCHA figures show that between 2009 and recent years, hundreds of Palestinian structures in Area C — including educational facilities — have been demolished annually. In 2022 alone, OCHA recorded one of the highest annual rates of demolitions in the West Bank in years, with displacement affecting thousands of Palestinians, among them families with school-age children whose access to education was directly severed.
What Demolition Means for Palestinian Children Day to Day
The consequences of Area C school demolition are not abstract. UNICEF oPt has reported that Palestinian children in Area C face some of the most acute barriers to education in the occupied territory: long distances to the nearest functioning school, dangerous road conditions, poverty that makes transportation impossible for many families, and the cumulative trauma of watching community infrastructure repeatedly destroyed.
When a school is demolished, children often miss weeks or months of schooling while communities negotiate with donors and authorities for replacement structures — structures that may themselves face new orders. For girls in conservative herding communities, the barrier rises higher still: distance and security concerns mean that without a local school, many girls do not attend at all.
OCHA’s Education Cluster coordination work has attempted to document and respond to these disruptions, but the structural cause — the denial of planning rights to Palestinians in Area C combined with active enforcement of demolition orders — remains unaddressed. The tire walls of Khan al-Ahmar’s school stand as perhaps the most visible emblem of what Palestinian communities build when they are left no other choice, and what they are told must be torn down.
Sources
- OCHA oPt — Protection of Civilians weekly reports and Education Cluster updates
- UNICEF State of Palestine — Education and child protection reporting
- Norwegian Refugee Council — Documentation of donor-funded structures demolished in Area C
- Save the Children Palestine — Reporting on education access and psychological impact in Area C
- OCHA oPt — Annual West Bank demolition and displacement figures (2022 reporting period)
