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‘Direct targeting’: Attacks on Gaza’s schools continue to increase
More than 76 percent of schools in the Gaza Strip require “full reconstruction or major rehabilitation” to be functional in the future, according to a new assessment.
Based on satellite imagery collected in May, the new Education Cluster assessment highlights a “continuous spike in the direct targeting of schools” the latest Gaza situation update from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reports.
Of the school buildings used as shelters for displaced people in Gaza, 69 percent have been directly hit or damaged in attacks, OCHA reports. And more than 96 percent of the schools directly attacked – 296 in total – were located in areas subject to Israeli military evacuation orders, OCHA adds.
Talal al-Hathal, director of the Al Fakhoora Programme at the Education Above All Foundation in Qatar, said Israelis attacks have ravaged Gaza’s educational sector.
Such attacks are “shameful as we consider the global education crisis where we see that more than 250 million children are out of school globally”, al-Hathal told Al Jazeera.
Israel has ‘systematic strategy’ of making Gaza uninhabitable
What we’re seeing in Rafah is part of a long, systematic strategy by the Israeli military since day one of this war.
The deliberate and intentional destruction of all means of life, including public facilities, infrastructure, as well as residential homes, turned entire residential blocks and homes and areas into piles of rubble across the Gaza Strip.
Just a cursory look at what’s going on feeds into one conclusion: Israel and its military, an occupying force on the ground, are doing whatever in their power to make Gaza uninhabitable, and that includes the deliberate destruction of residential homes.
Don’t forget that people here, the one thing that they have right now … is the hope of going back to their homes.
But with the ongoing systematic demolition of their homes either in the northern part of Gaza City, the central areas and right now what we’re seeing in Tal as-Sultan in Rafah City, hundreds upon hundreds of homes are being demolished.
A view of destroyed residential area following the Israeli attacks as Palestinians try to spend their daily lives in Khan Younis, Friday
