Qais Omar Darwesh
11 June 2026•Update: 11 June 2026
The Jerusalem Governorate warned Thursday of an Israeli plan to remove a vocational training college run by the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) in the occupied city.
In a statement, the governorate said the Israeli municipality is advancing a plan to build a “new educational complex” on land that has housed UNRWA’s vocational training college for decades in occupied East Jerusalem.
The college, known as the Qalandiya Training College, is located between Kafr Aqab and the Qalandiya refugee camp in the city.
According to UNRWA, the training center is serving 350 male and female students. It is located on land made available to the agency by the Jordanian government before Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967.
“The Israeli project represents a new link in the chain of Israeli policies aimed at undermining the work of the UN agency in occupied Jerusalem,” the governorate said.
“The plan carries political and settlement dimensions and would cover 82 dunams (82,000 square meters),” it warned.
It called the Israeli plan “dangerous” as it targets an existing UN institution providing educational and vocational services to Palestinian refugees.
Israel has taken a series of measures against the UNRWA in recent years amid its genocidal war, which has killed nearly 73,000 people in the Gaza Strip since October 2023.
In January of this year, Israeli forces demolished structures inside the UNRWA headquarters in East Jerusalem. The Knesset also passed a law to cut electricity and water supplies to the UN agency’s premises in the occupied city.
UNRWA was established by the UN General Assembly more than 70 years ago to assist Palestinians who were forcibly displaced from their land.
*Writing by Lina Altawell in Istanbul
