Since the start of 2026, the 70-year-old vocational school run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), Kalandia Training Centre (KTC), has been threatened by sustained Israeli pressure. First, the Israeli Knesset cut off power to the college in January 2026 (after passing an amendment in December 2025 preventing Israeli companies from providing electricity, water, and financial services to UNRWA facilities). Now the Jerusalem Municipality is proposing to demolish the facility.1

In April 2026, the Jerusalem Municipality advanced Plan 101-1421205 “Educational Complex—Kufr ‘Aqab” to build public institutions and widen the road along the selected area.2

“The plan designates most of the buildings of UNRWA’s vocational training college for demolition, threatening one of the last remaining Palestinian vocational education institutions in Jerusalem,” Ir Amim, an Israeli organization monitoring Jerusalem policy, wrote on X. “An Ir Amim review found multiple cases in which Palestinian land was expropriated, and residents were displaced in the name of building schools, while the promised educational facilities were delayed for years or never built at all.”3

The Palestinian Authority’s Jerusalem Governorate also noted that several Israeli confiscations of land throughout Jerusalem for the purported purposes of building educational institutions have only succeeded at taking land, not building anything.

“The educational complex project in Jabal Mukabbir—approved in 2017—saw no actual progress until eight years after its authorization, and the majority of it remains unbuilt to this day,” the governorate said. It also highlighted the case of the Salihiyya family in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, who were forcibly expelled from their home and commercial plant nursery in 2022 under the pretext of establishing educational facilities. Construction work has still not begun.

In ‘Anata, Israeli officials approved a school project years ago, according to the governorate, but building has not begun.4

The municipality’s decision to move forward on the KTC confiscation follows a spate of anti-UNRWA activity by Israel begun in 2024. After enacting a law prohibiting UNRWA from working in territory over which Israel considers itself sovereign and denying all international staff visas, the Israel Land Authority demolished UNRWA’s headquarters in Sheikh Jarrah.5 The government is planning to build a military complex on the site. Israeli authorities have also already closed all of UNRWA’s schools in East Jerusalem (see Israel Closes All UNRWA Schools in East Jerusalem). “The timing here is the important thing, really,” Ir Amim researcher Aviv Tatarsky told Jerusalem Story.6 “Like the Jerusalem Municipality could have built or decided to go ahead with such a plan 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago. Why is it doing it today? Well, it’s doing it today because there’s this big Israeli campaign against UNRWA.”

According to Roland Friedrich, director of UNRWA’s affairs in the West Bank, the agency has not received any notification of the municipality’s plans to demolish its school.

“On the site itself, we have seen several unauthorized entries by Israeli security forces over the past 18 months . . . but we have not received any formal notification in relation to the intent of closure,” Friedrich told Jerusalem Story.7

In 1951, UNRWA was granted rights from the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan to use the 88-dunam (22-acre) plot of land for a technical school for Palestinian refugees.8 In 1953, UNRWA established the technical school, also known as the KTC, on the site.

“The land of the KTC is Jordanian land,” Friedrich told Jerusalem Story. “So our work there is based on a project agreement with the Jordanian authorities from the 1950s. And the training center itself is a UN installation that enjoys full privileged immunities—diplomatic privileges and immunities under international law including immunity of illegal, unauthorized entry, searches, and so on.”

According to Ir Amim, the school is located on land belonging to the Palestinian village of Qalandiya in the West Bank, while the Israeli authorities deem it to be within the borders of annexed East Jerusalem, in the neighborhood of Kufr ‘Aqab. The school is adjacent to the Qalandiya refugee camp, which is just north of Jerusalem and lies in both Area C and within the municipal boundaries, near Qalandiya checkpoint. The vocational school, built in 1953 long before Israel’s occupation, is located just nearby, within the Jerusalem municipal boundaries.

The Jewish National Fund claims a small strip of the southern end of the plot was purchased by Jews before 1948, and that the organization is now its owners.9 Despite these claims, the entire area was transferred to the Jordanian Custodian of Enemy Property after 1948, when Jordan controlled the West Bank.10 Israel’s occupation of the West Bank does not negate Jordanian authority over the land, given that Israeli occupation and annexation of the territory is illegal under international law. Any Israeli land claims are void. UNRWA has escalated the unprecedented destruction of UN property by a member state in good standing to the offices of the UN Secretary General and could face sanctions.

The KTC “continues to be the only vocational training center for male Palestinian refugee youth from the West Bank, specifically from the camps,” Friedrich told Jerusalem Story. “We have more than 330 trainees there and 70 working on-site. There are also dormitories on the site for the students who come from remote parts of the West Bank. We offer 16 specializations in this training center: carpentry, auto mechanics, renewable energy, design, IT. It’s a unique facility that really gives hope [and] future jobs for young Palestine refugees.”

Since Israel cut electricity to the facility in January 2026, the school has relied on generators to support the students’ education. While the generators keep the school open, Friedrich explained that it can only operate at limited capacity, given that they must ration power. Despite the obstacles, though, Friedrich emphasizes there is no substitute for this school.

“There is no alternative facility, because these are workshops that have been in place for many, many years,” Friedrich said. “And if that thing is closed, the kids are out of school, and generations of students have been trained there, so that . . . also has a negative impact on the future of the youth and just leads to more despair.”