The Israeli army demolished using construction machinery yesterday Sunday a Palestinian primary school near Bethlehem, which had been built with the help of the European Union, the official Palestinian news agency WAFA reported.

Israeli troops entered the village where the school was located in the early hours of yesterday morning and used tear gas to disperse gathered residents before proceeding to destroy the building.

This is the second time that this particular primary school, al-Tahadi, in the occupied West Bank has been demolished. It was already leveled in 2017, before being rebuilt.

In March, a Jerusalem court upheld a right-wing Israeli group’s request to demolish the school again, ruling that it was built “arbitrarily” and was “dangerous.”

The demolition was condemned by the Palestinian side, but also by the delegation of the European Union to the Palestinian Authority, which had financed its reconstruction.

The EU expressed “horror” at the development, stressing that it was “closely monitoring this case and had asked the Israeli authorities not to proceed with the demolition, which directly affects 81 children and their education”, said a representative of the head of European diplomacy, Joseph Borel.

The EU also noted that “demolitions are illegal under international law” and that “children’s right to education must be respected”.

The EU delegation to Palestine pointed out earlier yesterday that “Israel should stop all demolitions and evictions, which only serve to aggravate the plight of the Palestinian population and further escalate the already tense environment.”

Israel demolishes houses and other buildings erected by Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem without the permission of the Israeli authorities. It also destroys homes of families of alleged perpetrators of attacks, a practice labeled collective punishment by human rights groups.

Ahmed Nasser, an official in the Palestinian Ministry of Health, underlined the importance of running schools in remote villages in the occupied West Bank. It allows to prevent “displacement and even forced evictions (of the population), if Israel wants to proceed with land confiscation”, as “the presence of the population prevents” such plans, he explained.

Behind the request to the court was Regavim, a non-governmental organization of the Zionist right, which argued that the construction of the school was part of a Palestinian plan to “build a structure on virgin land, project the claim that it is a school and convert the demolition of a humanitarian issue”.

For its part, the Israeli organization Peace Now in April called the decision to demolish the school “shameful” by the Israeli public administration, which “is now headed by (far-right finance minister Bezalel) Smotrich.”

Some 490,000 Israeli settlers live in settlements in the West Bank – beyond East Jerusalem – among 2.8 million Palestinians. Most of the international community considers the settlement activity illegal.