WASHINGTON — A dispute over a planned school in east Jerusalem is escalating, with Israeli officials accusing the United Nations of trying to stop construction at a vacant UNRWA compound that they say is urgently needed for Palestinian students.
According to Israeli officials who spoke to The Post, work crews are expected to arrive in the coming days at the 22-acre property in Kafr Aqab, a crowded neighborhood in east Jerusalem, with the goal of opening the new campus in time for the Sept. 1 start of the school year.
But those officials claim the UN is preparing to criticize Israel over its move to remove UNRWA — the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees — from the site.
Israeli officials contend the pushback is tied to Israel’s 2025 decision to expel UNRWA from the country following allegations that some of the agency’s Gaza employees took part in the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks. They argue the UN is now resisting the school project even though, in their view, it would directly help Palestinian children.
“They’re choosing politics over Palestinian children,” one Israeli official told The Post, saying the UN appears more focused on maintaining UNRWA’s presence in Israel than supporting the creation of new classrooms for Arab students.
“When politics comes before children, the UN has lost sight of its most basic responsibility. The UN should be opening doors for children, not keeping school gates closed for political reasons,” the official added.
More than 140 boys have already registered for grades seven through 10, and officials say the school is expected to add grades 11 and 12 in the years ahead. The wider education complex, along with a proposed community center, is ultimately projected to serve about 22,000 residents in the area.
The planned campus targets one of Jerusalem’s most congested Arab neighborhoods, where Israeli officials say a shortage of local classrooms forces many children to travel two to three hours in each direction just to attend school.
The sprawling compound sits like a giant green island in the middle of one of Jerusalem’s most crowded Arab neighborhoods, surrounded by rows of high-rise apartment buildings.
Despite this, officials say it has remained largely unused except for a small vocational training center operated by UNRWA.
Supporters of the project point to the striking contrast between the crowded neighborhood and the largely closed-off compound.
“You have this hugely densely populated area,” one source in Jerusalem said. “Then you see this huge blocked-off land that can’t be used by the local residents.
“At the end of the day, children had to drive hours to school every morning because the UN kept this huge compound for itself.”
The warning signs that the UN is planning its next diplomatic broadside against the Jewish state have already appeared.
On July 27, UNRWA accused Israeli municipal officials of “forcibly” entering the facility — known as the Kalandia Training Center — for the second time in less than a month, calling the compound “a United Nations property” protected under international law and warning that it remains under threat of what it described as an “unlawful seizure” by Israel.
The agency argued that losing the site would deprive hundreds of Palestinian refugees of vocational education and cited an International Court of Justice advisory opinion that it says obligates Israel to protect UN property.
UNRWA urged Israel to “refrain from any further interference” with its facilities, staff and beneficiaries.
Israeli officials say that statement — filled with incorrect information about the land that Israel owns — previewed the broader international backlash they expect once renovation work begins.
“The UN will do a big outcry that Israel is going into UN property,” the official said. “But that’s a big lie because it’s absolutely not UN property.
“The UN is more interested in attacking Israel than in helping Palestinian children in Jerusalem. The hypocrisy is astonishing even by the UN’s own standards,” the person added.
Israeli officials say the property has become a symbol of what they view as the UN’s determination to preserve UNRWA’s presence in Israel, even after the Jewish state formally banned the agency from operating in the country following the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks.
They contend that while UNRWA has maintained only a small vocational center on the site, it has blocked repeated efforts since 2022 to redevelop the property into schools despite the severe shortage of educational facilities in Kafr Aqab.
Israeli officials also dispute UNRWA’s claim that the compound is UN property.
They say the land was purchased in 1937 by the Jewish National Fund during the British Mandate and that Jordan merely granted UNRWA permission to operate a vocational training center there after 1948 without ever transferring ownership. The Post has reviewed the original deed of sale.
Israeli officials say the municipality of east Jerusalem is now reclaiming the land that has always remained under Israeli ownership rather than seizing UN property.
If renovations begin as planned this week, Israeli sources said they expect the diplomatic battle to erupt almost immediately — with the UN protesting Israel’s removal of UNRWA from the compound even as workers prepare classrooms for Palestinian students to arrive in less than a month.
The United Nations did not immediate respond to a request for comment.
