Israel moves to evict UN training centre for Palestinians

Kafr ‘Aqab: Israeli police raided a vocational training centre run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees in an east Jerusalem suburb on Tuesday, in a move a far-right minister said aimed to “remove” the body from the site.

The move follows repeated warnings by UNRWA that Israeli authorities were threatening its Qalandia training centre, located between the east Jerusalem neighbourhood of Kafr Aqab and Qalandia refugee camp.

The centre was established in 1952 and offers vocational training to around 340 Palestinians from the occupied West Bank every year, according to UNRWA.

“Making history! This morning we are starting work to remove UNRWA from Kafr Aqab,” national security minister Itamar Ben Gvir posted on his Telegram.

“Large forces of the Israel police are operating together with the relevant bodies to implement the law and remove UNRWA from the site,” he added in a statement.

“An organisation whose employees were involved in terrorism and which time and again served as a cover for Hamas has no right to exist for even one more second, and it has no place in Jerusalem and in the State of Israel,” he said.

Israel has repeatedly accused UNRWA of providing cover for Hamas militants, claiming that some of its employees took part in the group’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which sparked the war in Gaza.

A series of investigations, including one led by France’s former foreign minister Catherine Colonna, found some “neutrality-related issues” at UNRWA but stressed Israel had not provided conclusive evidence for its headline allegation.

An AFP journalist at the scene on Tuesday said Israeli forces had closed the main road near the entrance to the Qalandia Training Centre, while forces inside the institute were moving from one building to another.

The journalist reported seeing a convoy of three civilian vehicles leaving the institute, escorted by the military.

The Jerusalem Governorate, the Palestinian local authority for the region encompassing Qalandia camp, said Israeli forces had raised the Israeli flag in the courtyard of the training centre.

Mohammad Saeed Aslan, from the Popular Committee for Services in Qalandia camp, accused Israel of wanting “to take control of UNRWA’s institutions in general”.

Israel occupied and annexed east Jerusalem in 1967.

Israel’s foreign ministry on Tuesday announced that the Jerusalem municipality had begun “renovation work” on a “new educational and community complex in Jerusalem’s Kafr Aqab neighborhood, for the benefit of thousands of its Arab residents”.

“Despite holding no property rights to the plot, UNRWA has walled off the land for decades,” it said in a statement, adding that “while UNRWA is playing politics, the Jerusalem Municipality is improving daily life for all its residents, Jews and Arabs alike”.

The raid on the Qalandia training centre comes a day after representatives from more than 25 diplomatic missions and international organisations visited the site.