Systematically Denied: Israel’s Erosion of Palestinian Children’s Right to Education Across the Occupied Palestinian Territory

For generations, education has been a cornerstone of Palestinian society. Despite decades of occupation, conflict, and forced displacement, Palestinians historically maintained some of the highest literacy and educational attainment rates in the region.

Across the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), Israeli authorities systematically undermine Palestinian children’s right to education through military attacks, destruction of educational infrastructure, movement restrictions, state-backed settler violence, forced displacement, attacks on educational institutions, and policies that have weakened the systems on which education depends. While these drivers predate October 2023, the scale and severity of what has followed mark a turning point.

Since the start of the war in 2023, Israeli forces have obliterated Gaza’s education system, depriving all school-aged children – around 700,000 students – of proper education as schools have been damaged or destroyed. In the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, more than 834,000 students face Israeli imposed barriers to education, including physical danger on their journeys to school and schools
threatened with demolition.

The impact extends far beyond missed school days. For Palestinian children, schools are places of learning, protection, psychosocial support, and social development. Their loss has profound consequences for children’s wellbeing, cognitive development, and future life chances. Young children are missing critical developmental milestones; older students face interrupted examinations, delayed graduation, and shrinking opportunities to pursue further education. This systematic dismantling of Palestinian education is denying an entire generation of its right to learn and the opportunities, dignity, and future that education makes possible.