Israeli Forces Fire Teargas Grenades inside West Bank School Suffocating Students, Teachers

Armed Israeli soldiers fired teargas into a Palestinian school. (File Photo: Via MEMO)

December 17, 2020

Dozens of Palestinian students and teachers today suffocated from teargas fired by the Israeli military inside their school in the village of Anin, west of the northern West Bank city of Jenin, according to the Palestinian news agency WAFA.

Local sources told WAFA that the Israeli army attack on the school caused injury and panic, and disrupted classes as teachers rushed to help the students chocked from the teargas.

The education directorate in Jenin condemned the attack on the school and called for holding Israel accountable for its crimes against Palestinian education, students and people.

Attacks on education by Israeli military forces and Israeli settlers in Palestine constitute grave violations of children’s rights to education and development. These attacks are particularly prevalent in the most vulnerable areas of the West Bank – Area C, H2 in Hebron (Al-Khalil), and East Jerusalem.

“Israel’s strategy in attacking the Palestinian schooling system is a brutal logic, that has guided the Israeli government strategy regarding Palestinian education for 70 years,” wrote Palestinian journalist and editor of The Palestine Chronicle Ramzy Baroud.

“It is a war,” Baroud added, “that cannot be discussed or understood outside the larger war on Palestinian identity, freedom, and, in fact, the very existence of the Palestinian people.”