UN Watch Response

Since fighting began on October 7th, there have been numerous documented instances of Hamas operating from in or near Gaza schools. These include IDF troops being targeted by terrorists attacking from UNRWA schools[1] and Hamas terror tunnels in the vicinity of UNRWA schools.[2] On January 18, 2024, Col. Elad Shushan, commander of the 646th Reserve Paratroopers Brigade, said: “There is not a UNRWA site, school, mosque, or kindergarten in which we didn’t find weapons. None. One hundred percent.”[3]

While as a general rule of International Humanitarian Law, schools are civilian objects protected from attack, they lose protected civilian status if used for military purposes.[4] Article 52 of the First Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions defines “military objects” as “objects which by their nature, location, purpose or use make an effective contribution to military action and whose total or partial destruction, capture or neutralization, in the circumstances ruling at the time, offers a definite military advantage.”[5] This includes being used as an operational center, to store weapons, or to launch attacks.[6]

Hamas’s use of schools for military purposes in violation of international law has been well-documented for years. During Operation Protective Edge in the summer of 2014, UNRWA admitted three times that Hamas rockets were stored in its schools.[7] A subsequent UN investigation found that terrorist rockets had been stored in UNRWA schools that were actively being used by children and that rockets had also been launched from UNRWA schools.[8]

In more recent years, UNRWA has also admitted finding Hamas terror tunnels underneath its schools.[9] During the May 2021 conflict with Hamas, the IDF published evidence that Hamas had launched rockets from a site near civilian structures, including a UN building, schools, a mosque, and apartment buildings.[10] In November 2021, UNRWA’s former Gaza Director Mathias Schmale said in an interview with NPR: “Many people told me through my four years, there’s tunnels everywhere [in Gaza] and it’s a safe assumption.”[11] Hamas’s use of UNRWA facilities for military purposes converts those facilities into lawful military targets, violates the IHL rule against use of human shields, and constitutes a war crime.[12]

Unfortunately, because Hamas embeds itself in the civilian infrastructure of Gaza, including schools, these facilities are sometimes lawfully targeted in battles against Hamas. Therefore, Peru, Morocco, Afghanistan, and Iraq should be directing their outrage at Hamas, not Israel. They should also condemn Hamas and other terrorist groups whose indiscriminate attacks on Israeli civilians during the current round of fighting have hit several Israeli schools, including in Sderot, Eilat, and Tel Aviv.[13]