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Education in Emergency: Protecting Education Under Attack - Special Focus: Abu Nuwar

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Education under Attack in Abu Nuwar Abu Nuwar is a Bedouin community in the Jerusalem Governorate, located around 150 meters from the main road between Maa’le Adumim (est. 1975) and Qedar (est. 1985) settlements. The land of the community is estimated on 389 dunums and access to the community is via an unpaved rocky road. The community is located entirely in Area C of Palestine and is included within the jurisdiction of the Ma’ale Adumim in an area that was designated by the ICA in 1999 as ‘G Block’ – a neighbourhood of Ma’ale Adumim that would create a territorial link between it and Qedar. According to BIMKOM, an Israeli human rights NGO working in Abu Nuwar, G Block constitutes an area of 389 dunams and will contain 1,500 housing units exclusively for Israeli settlers.

Of the Jahalin Bedouin communities in the Jerusalem Periphery, the village of Abu Nuwar is imminently at risk of being forcibly transferred to the Jabal West relocation site. This would constitute the fourth wave of ICAadministered forced population transfers of the Jahalin Bedouin since the initial ICA transfers in 1997. As such, Abu Nuwar is one of the 46 Bedouin communities slated for relocation to one of three designated relocation sites by the Israeli Civil Administration (ICA). In its response to a petition challenging the transfer of the community, the State of Israel noted that it intended to displace the community in order to allow for the expansion of the Ma’ale Addumim settlement and that, furthermore, if the Court would allow for this transfer, it would provide a “litmus test” for other communities to be likewise displaced. 2 As a result, the community is being subjected to a harsh coercive environment, which encourages their non-consensual displacement from the land. According to the Abu Nuwar community, the ICA has demanded that the inhabitants of Abu Nuwar provide it with signed approval for its forcible transfer plans, in Grave Breach of Article 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

The members of Abu Nuwar community are refugees, displaced from their original land in Tel Arad/Negev desert after the 1948 war. They settled in the West Bank in the early 1950s, and have permanently resided in the eastern mountains of Jerusalem since the early 1960s. The population consists of 107 households comprising 633 people including 345 children (majority of whom are registered refugees).

Since 2005, the ICA has issued stop work orders (SWO) and demolition orders against virtually all of the nearly 500 structures in Abu Nuwar, many of which are donor-funded humanitarian assistance. According to the community, orders were served in 2005, 2008 and 2015, but the first demolitions took place on 6 January 2016, after they had refused ICA’s request that they accept to be forcibly transferred to Jabal West.

Attacks on the Abu Nuwar School In February 2016, the Israeli Civil Administration (ICA) accompanied by the Israeli Military demolished three donor-funded school-related structures and confiscated equipment such as tables and chairs in the Palestinian Bedouin community of Abu Nuwar by way of administrative demolitions.3 This adversely affected 62 pupils who were attending the school and violated their right to education.

In September 2016, the ICA again demolished two donor-funded school-related structures in Abu Nuwar. The third-grade class has since been forced to take place in the community’s barber shop due to a lack of appropriate education infrastructure.

In August 2017, two donor-funded solar panels and their batteries which serve the elementary school, kindergarten and community centre were confiscated, despite the fact that an injunction preventing its confiscation had been issued that day by the Israeli High Court. This again amounts to an attack on education and directly interfering with the pupils’ right to education in this community.