With the start of the academic year in Palestine, the education sector is undergoing an unprecedented structural collapse, following years of successive crises mainly due to the Israeli occupation policies and practices in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), which systematically undermine Palestinians’ right to education. In the West Bank, restrictions on movement, through checkpoints, roadblocks, and the Annexation Wall, impede students and teachers from reaching schools and universities. The frequent demolition of schools, particularly in Area C, and the denial of building permits for educational facilities constitute direct violations of the right to education. In Gaza, the recurrent military aggressions happening in the context of a genocide have destroyed hundreds of schools, and the ongoing blockade severely limits access to educational materials, technology, and reconstruction supplies. These cumulative challenges have pushed Palestinian education, which has long been a hallmark of Palestinian achievement globally and a cornerstone for building national consciousness and preserving identity, to the brink of total collapse.
One major factor in the disruption of the Palestinian education sector is the severe financial crisis resulting from Israel’s withholding of Palestinian clearance revenues. Since early 2024, the oPt has faced a severe financial crisis due to Israel’s continued withholding of clearance revenues, tax revenues collected by Israel on behalf of the Palestinian Authority under the 1994 Paris Protocol. This practice, which has become systematic and recurrent over the past years, has surpassed being a mere financial dispute to become a political and economic pressure tool aimed at undermining the functioning of Palestinian institutions and impeding their ability to fulfill obligations to vital sectors, foremost among them education.
Clearance revenues constitute the primary source of the Palestinian Authority’s income, accounting for 60–70% of its annual revenue. The value of funds withheld by Israel from 2019 until early 2025 exceeded 10 billion shekels, with monthly deductions during 2024 amounting to approximately 500 million shekels. Israel justifies these deductions as payments made by the Authority to the families of martyrs and prisoners, a policy legally classified as collective punishment in violation of international humanitarian law.
Data from the Palestinian Ministry of Education indicate that the number of school students in the West Bank and Gaza exceeds 1.5 million, of whom over 700,000 are in Gaza alone. In September 2025, the Ministry was forced to postpone the start of the academic year due to a financial shortfall caused by the clearance crisis, except for Jerusalem schools, which continued to operate under exceptional circumstances. Meanwhile, private schools and UNRWA schools continued to operate on a limited basis, exacerbating the educational and social gap among students.
This has had a drastic impact on the Palestinian right to education and the education sector; The inability of the Palestinian government to disburse salaries has led tens of thousands of teachers to strike, halting education in thousands of public schools in the West Bank, while schools in Gaza remain non-operational due to Israel’s genocide and military aggression which has obliterated the sector. With repeated postponements of the official school year, over one million Palestinian children have been deprived of their fundamental right to education, in blatant violation of international treaties guaranteeing this right unconditionally.
The past two years have witnessed a sharp decline in the regularity of the educational process across the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Thousands of public schools have been disrupted, and the start of the academic year has been delayed multiple times due to the financial shortfall caused by the withholding of clearance funds. Concurrently, schools in Gaza have suffered partial or total destruction due to the genocide, while students and teachers in the West Bank face severe living pressures and an unstable educational environment.
Repeated interruptions in schooling have become a permanent feature of the Palestinian educational landscape, resulting in accumulated learning deficits that threaten an entire generation with deprivation from educational and developmental opportunities. Estimates by the Palestinian Ministry of Education indicate that over 1.5 million students are at risk of losing their academic year, while tens of thousands of teachers face difficult living conditions due to delayed salaries and deteriorating wages.
The repercussions of the clearance crisis extend beyond financial implications, affecting the daily lives of children and teachers alike and posing multiple humanitarian, social, and psychological challenges. Repeated school disruptions not only result in loss of learning opportunities but also expose children to early school dropout, behavioral deviation, child labor in domestic or economic activities, and increased incidence of early marriage for girls, directly linked to the deterioration of educational and social environments.
Psychologically, children experience increasing feelings of frustration and despair due to prolonged deprivation from education and school stability, affecting their cognitive and social skill development and heightening risks of anxiety and depression. Teachers face persistent salary delays, imposing severe economic pressures that undermine their ability to provide effective teaching and increase their sense of helplessness toward their professional responsibilities toward students and their own families.
The suspension of education also weakens the school’s role as a protective community institution, reducing safe spaces for children and diminishing opportunities to build a robust social support network, thereby exacerbating the vulnerability of Palestinian communities to economic and political pressures. From this perspective, the financial and political crisis has escalated into a comprehensive humanitarian crisis, threatening the future of an entire generation and deepening social and psychological disparities within Palestinian society.
Under international law, Israel, as the occupying power bears clear obligations to ensure the welfare of the protected Palestinian population, including safeguarding the right to education. This right is enshrined in Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 13 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), and Article 50 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which requires the occupying power to facilitate the proper working of educational institutions. As Israel exercises effective control over the Palestinian economy, borders, and fiscal transfers, including the collection of customs and clearance revenues on behalf of the Palestinian Authority, it must not take measures that obstruct the functioning of essential public services, including education.
By withholding Palestinian tax clearance revenues, funds legally belonging to the Palestinians, Israel effectively deprives the Palestinian education system of the financial resources needed to operate. Israel’s unilateral withholding of these funds, often as a form of political or punitive pressure, undermines the accessibility, quality, and continuity of education for hundreds of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children and students. The resulting disruption violates Israel’s obligations under Articles 13 and 14 of the ICESCR, which require states to respect and protect the right to education without discrimination or coercion. The gravity of this violation is further heightened as it affects a right with enhanced protection under international law: the child’s right to education, which cannot be infringed upon even in emergencies or armed conflict.
Israel’s systematic withholding of clearance revenues constitutes a form of collective punishment prohibited under Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention and may amount to an unlawful economic coercive measure under customary international law. By creating conditions that paralyze the public education system, Israel not only breaches its duties as an occupying power but also interferes with the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination, as affirmed by the ICJ Advisory Opinion on the Wall (2004) and reinforced in the 2024 ICJ Advisory Opinion on the legal consequences of Israeli policies in the oPt (2024). Consequently, Israel’s measures that have deprived hundreds of thousands of children of education and thousands of teachers of salaries are not only breaches of international protocols but fundamental violations of peremptory norms of international humanitarian law, reflecting a systematic policy aimed at dismantling the Palestinian community from within by paralyzing its educational institutions.
As such, the international community, particularly states parties to the Geneva Conventions and UN bodies, has a responsibility to ensure Israel’s compliance with its international obligations, including by opposing the use of fiscal control as a coercive tool and supporting measures that safeguard the uninterrupted right to education for Palestinian children.
In light of the above, the clearance crisis is not merely a financial issue but a deliberate occupation mechanism designed to reproduce dependency and control Palestinian decision-making. By withholding revenues that constitute over two-thirds of the Palestinian Authority’s income, Israel effectively paralyzes state institutions and undermines education, a fundamental right and a key pillar of societal development, resulting in the cultural and educational incapacitation of Palestinian generations. This policy transforms education into a hostage of financial and political control, depriving children of schools, teachers of salaries, and society of stability. The outcome is an ongoing violation of human dignity and a systematic attempt to weaken Palestinian society by obstructing generations from accessing knowledge and exercising their right to education.
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