QALANDIA: In the crowded Qalandia refugee camp, UNRWA’s training center is an island of calm where young people from the occupied West Bank master trades, but a recent Israeli ban on all cooperation with the UN agency has left the center in limbo.
On the spacious campus, a stone’s throw from the wall that separates the West Bank and Israel, plumbers in training assemble pipes, future electricians wire circuits, and carpenters hammer together roof frames.
But how long these scenes will last is an open question after Israel last month banned UNRWA, founded in 1949, from operating on Israeli soil or coordinating with Israeli authorities.

UNRWA’s ban in Israel and occupied East Jerusalem has raised fears that its West Bank employees could face problems not only accessing those areas but also moving around more generally because they would lose the ability to coordinate with the Israeli authorities manning checkpoints.
The same fears apply to visas and permits delivered by Israeli authorities.
Eighteen-year-old Ahmed Naseef, a refugee from the Jalazone camp north of nearby Ramallah, said he did not know what he and his classmates would do should the Qalandia training center close as a result of the law.
“It would disrupt my fellow students. Many don’t have the financial means to study at another institute. Here, it’s almost free,” he said during a class where he was learning how to install lights in a room.
“We imagine that we’re setting up a bedroom and a bathroom, installing lights, outlets, and power points,” said the student, who has been a trainee for two months after graduating high school.
“If it closes, I might consider going to university,” he said, adding that this had been his original intention, but his current circumstances “don’t allow for that.”
Jonathan Fowler, UNRWA spokesman in Jerusalem, warned that if some of the services could not continue, the socioeconomic consequences could be “potentially disastrous.”
“If these services are not able to operate ... who is going to provide education for the children and the adolescents in this camp?“
Baha Awaad, the school’s principal, said it trains 350 students but cannot provide for more due to the lack of permission to expand buildings.
Asked whether the students could finish their school year, Awaad admitted: “Frankly, we don’t know.”
“We’re operating as usual, not wanting to spread fear. We reassure students that we’re doing our best to continue teaching here,” he said, adding that worried students had already approached him.
As for what would happen should the school close, Awaad said: “That depends. They’ll be left without options if it’s a permanent closure.”
Fowler said there was no sustainable alternative to his agency’s varied work on such a large scale.
“You can’t just flick a switch, and UNRWA disappears and someone else steps in,” he said.
“The law is very unclear on many fronts,” he continued, so “what the intention is, how that would be operationalized is extremely uncertain.”
Tensions between UNRWA and Israel began after Israel accused about a dozen of the agency’s staff of taking part in Hamas’s unprecedented attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
A series of probes found some “neutrality-related issues” at UNRWA.
They determined that nine employees “may have been involved” in the Oct. 7 attack but found no evidence for Israel’s central allegations.
A quarter of the West Bank’s 912,000 refugees live in 19 camps, according to UNRWA, and many rely on various services provided by the agency’s 3,800 West Bank staff.
One such recipient, teenager Naseef, graduated from a UNRWA school and received health care from one of its clinics.
In his camp, he said: “The situation is especially hard for the clinic, which many people rely on for medications and treatments. If it shuts down, they’ll be cut off.”
Back in Qalandia camp’s narrow alleys, among murals of deceased Palestinian fighters, a nurse at the crowded UNRWA clinic said there was no viable alternative for residents should her facility close.
At the nearby UNRWA primary school for girls, headmaster Rana Nabhan said she “doesn’t know” whether her students will finish the school year.
Unaware of the challenges, a crowd of giggling schoolgirls run around in bright-colored bibs during gym class, bringing the courtyard to life.
Just over their shoulders is another mural in Arabic: “I love my beautiful school,” it reads.

BEIRUT: Toxic white dust hangs over the skies of Chiyah, the only area in Beirut’s southern suburbs where residents, until three days ago, clung to their homes, believing it was relatively safe from Israeli airstrikes.
Israeli warplanes launched more than 10 intermittent airstrikes on Saturday on buildings, whose residents had been warned half an hour before by the Israeli army to evacuate.
The number of strikes targeting the area in recent days has exceeded 30, reducing neighborhoods in Chiyah to rubble. Fires have consumed buildings that remain standing, despite the intense destruction caused by missile explosions.
Kamel, a lawyer and a resident of the area, initially hesitated to return to the neighborhood that he had fled less than an hour earlier.
He intended to check on his home after a strike hit a building adjacent to his own.
As Kamel tried to enter the area, all he could see were “piles of rubble that have changed the landmarks of the neighborhood where I was born and lived, a place where I knew the placement and color of every stone.”
Kamel, his eyes reddened by the pervasive smoke and his voice choked from the dust, said: “I do not understand why this neighborhood is being targeted. There is no Hezbollah presence here, only families who migrated from the countryside to the capital’s outskirts to live at the lowest possible cost.
“Who will compensate us? We do not belong to any party. Why all this destruction? How long will this go on? I am at retirement age; how can I rebuild what I lost today?”
Israeli raids on Saturday covered a significant number of targets, including a building near the headquarters of the Supreme Islamic Shia Council in Ghobeiri, as well as Burj Al-Barajneh, Haret Hreik, Ghobeiri and Bir Abed.
A raid destroyed four buildings on Abbas Al-Moussawi Street, and a building adjacent to the Haret Hreik municipality.
Safia, an 18-year-old resident, sustained a head injury from missile shrapnel. This was despite abiding by the Israeli evacuation warnings and remaining 500 meters from the targeted area. Safia was taking pictures on her phone at the time of the strike.
The increased hostilities that escalated in southern Lebanon have apparently halted the settlement talks that have taken place over the past two days, especially with the draft diplomatic solution received by Hezbollah.
Two paramedics were killed and four others were injured in a raid that targeted Hezbollah’s Islamic Health Organization in Kfar Tebnit.
Israeli warplanes carried out violent strikes against Tyre and its suburbs, where raids targeted the monuments area, Al-Hosh area and the industrial zone, injuring three people.
The raids destroyed houses in dozens of villages in Nabatieh, Tyre and Iklim Al-Teffah, and injured six people in Arnoun. Lebanon’s Civil Defense Forces pulled two victims from the rubble in Al-Ramadieh. Paramedics said that they had recovered five bodies.
An Israeli raid on a house in Qana in Iklim Al-Teffah Friday night killed citizen Nehmatallah Hussein Mallah, his wife and his three children.
Israeli forces continued their incursion into Lebanese territory in the town of Chamaa, 6 km from the southern border, under extensive fire cover.
Hezbollah reported that it engaged in confrontations with the Israeli army to the east of the Lebanese town of Markaba.
The Israeli army carried out the demolition of the Shimon Shrine in the town of Chamaa on Friday night.
Additionally, the headquarters of UNIFIL in the town was struck by an artillery shell.
Israeli army units made additional attempts to infiltrate the town of Ad-Dahira, as well as the axis of Tyre Harfa and Al-Jabeen.
This led to intense confrontations between Hezbollah and the Israeli forces, resulting in heavy Israeli artillery bombardment of these towns.
Hezbollah reported targeting of several Israeli sites, including the command center of the infantry battalion of the Eastern Brigade 769, located at the Ramim barracks, the Stella Maris naval base (a strategic site for maritime surveillance along the northern coast), the Shraga base (the administrative headquarters of the Golani Brigade) north of the city of Acre, and a gathering of soldiers at the newly established command center of the Western Brigade in the Yara barracks and the settlement of Kiryat Shmona.
Hezbollah launched an “aerial offensive using a swarm of attack drones targeting the headquarters of the special naval unit Shayetet 13 at the Atlit base, located south of Haifa. Additionally, an aerial assault was carried out with a group of attack drones on a gathering of soldiers in the settlement of Yeroam.”
Israeli media reported that there was a “power outage in several areas of Nahariya following the sound of sirens. This occurred after drone attacks and missile launches targeted Nahariya and the Galilee region from southern Lebanon. Additionally, a missile landed near a building in one of the towns in western Galilee.”
The Israeli military reported that it “detected the launch of 20 missiles from Lebanon, with some being intercepted, as well as four drones that were launched from Lebanon toward western Galilee in the morning.”