Shuafat | First One Through

A school in Jerusalem’s Shuafat refugee camp is reopening. The building is the same but UNRWA is no longer running it.

The school is now affiliated with Israel’s Ministry of Education and the Jerusalem Municipality. Jerusalem Deputy Mayor Aryeh King posted video of UNRWA signs being removed as the school prepared to open.

*Sign of UNRWA run school in Shu’afat, Jerusalem*

The change ends an educational arrangement dating back more than sixty years.

UNRWA established the Shuafat refugee camp in 1965, when Jordan controlled “East Jerusalem.” UNRWA’s educational policy, dating to 1952, has been to use the curriculum of the “host countries,” allowing refugee children to take local examinations and continue into local schools and universities.

So UNRWA worked with Jordan at that time.

There was nothing internationally settled about Jordan’s sovereignty over Jerusalem. Jordan seized eastern Jerusalem in 1948 and annexed the West Bank – including East Jerusalem in 1950. Even Britain, one of only two countries (along with Pakistan) which recognized Jordan’s illegal annexation of the West Bank, specifically withheld recognition of Jordanian sovereignty over Jerusalem. It only recognized Jordan’s de facto authority there.

Yet Jordan administered East Jerusalem, so UNRWA worked with Jordan there.

Then came 1967.

Israel captured East Jerusalem and became the government actually administering Shuafat, much like Jordan had previously. But UNRWA did not treat Israel the same way as the de facto administrating authority.

The Jordanian curriculum continued for years. After the Palestinian Authority was established, UNRWA increasingly coordinated its West Bank education program with it and ultimately used the Palestinian Authority curriculum.

That is difficult to square with the simple explanation that UNRWA follows the curriculum of its host country. The Palestinian Authority did not govern Jerusalem; Israel did. Yet UNRWA chose the PA curriculum for schools there.

The contrast is particularly striking today. Israel has nine foreign embassies located in Jerusalem, with Nauru announced as the tenth. Jordan never enjoyed anything approaching that level of international recognition of its rule over Jerusalem. Yet UNRWA had been willing to work with the authority actually administering the city when that authority was Jordan.

*UNRWA offices in Jerusalem (photo: First One Through)*

But the problem at Shuafat went beyond which government UNRWA chose to recognize educationally. It was what children at this particular school were saying they learned.

UNRWA says its curriculum framework must reflect UN principles of neutrality, human rights, tolerance, equality and non-discrimination.

Footage recorded at an UNRWA school in Shuafat in 2022 and published by Ynet in 2024 showed something very different.

Students said that stabbing and running over Jews brought Palestinians honor. One said he was prepared to carry out a suicide attack. Another said they were taught that Jews were terrorists. Another said they were taught that Jews were deceitful and evil and that he would stab and run them over.

View this post on Instagram

The videos offer a horrifying vision of what is taught at UN schools.

Israel eventually acted.

In May 2025, Israeli authorities closed six UNRWA schools in eastern Jerusalem, including three in Shuafat. UNRWA protested that hundreds of Palestinian children were being deprived of education. Israel said alternative schooling would be provided through the Jerusalem education system.

Now that alternative is becoming tangible.

A former UNRWA school in Shuafat is reopening under the Israeli Ministry of Education and Jerusalem Municipality.

The choice was never between UNRWA and no education. What can change is the system educating them and the content of that education.

The UNRWA sign coming down in the Shuafat school is symbolic. What the children learn when they walk back through those doors will determine whether the real change happened inside.

Reader’s often assume that the more reputable news organization do research and perform fact-checks before posting articles. However, they do not often consider the word choices or juxtapositions of those facts relayed in a story. The truths and half-truths can combine to distort reality. This becomes exacerbated when quotes from biased witnesses are included in the article.

Witness the July 6, 2014 New York Times article on page 8 describing the terrible abduction and murder of an Arab teenager as a case in point. The second paragraph of the story: “…Mohammed was at the recreation center named for his respected, expansive Palestinian family in the ancient section of the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Shuafat.” I will avoid commenting on the “respected” background of the Abu Khdeir family who “started farming [in Israel] 250 years ago” as I do not know them (and why should I doubt Jodi Rudoren?). Consider the proximity in one sentence of the words “Palestinian”, “ancient”, “East Jerusalem” and “Shuafat”. A reader could naturally conclude that Palestinian Arabs have long been living in the ancient Palestinian city of East Jerusalem. A quote from a member of the family in the article adds that “All Shuafat is in danger, all the settlers are around us. It’s like a monster – they want to eat us.” could lead a reader to conclude that Jews are recent “settlers” to the area and harass Arabs.

All of those conclusions would be false.

Shuafat is indeed thought to be an ancient site. Archeological excavations reveal Roman encampments and Jewish homes and mikvahs from 2000 years ago. However, neither Shuafat, nor the rest of Israel, have ancient Arab finds as Arabs did not come to the region en masse until the Muslim invasion in the 7^th century.

Shuafat remained a small village until 1967 when Jordan (together with Palestinian Arabs who were granted Jordanian citizenship) attacked Israel in the Six Day War. Israel took control of the “West Bank” and extended the boundaries of Jerusalem to include Shuafat and other villages around the city. In 1980, Israel declared all of Jerusalem to be its united capital.

For parties that do not recognize Israel’s annexation of the eastern part of Jerusalem, it would logically extend that those same people would not recognize Israel’s extension of Jerusalem’s boundaries. Shuafat is either a neighborhood in Jerusalem, Israel (if one accepts Israel’s position) OR it is a village in the West Bank (if one doesn’t).

Regarding the comment of “[Jewish] settlers”- there are many more new Muslims that moved to Jerusalem than there are new Jewish residents. Since 1967, when Israel reunified the city, until 2012, the Jewish population grew by 2.6 times while the Arab population grew by 4.4 times. This huge difference comes despite the higher (4.3) birth rate for Jewish women in Jerusalem than for Arab women (3.6).

Lastly, Shuafat and “East Jerusalem” are integral parts of Jerusalem. Just below 40% of the eastern part of Jerusalem which was annexed in 1967 is Jewish. Arabs and Jews work and live together in the city (compared to some Israeli cities like Umm al-Fahm that are 99% Arab). Shuafat sits just south of the second largest neighborhood in Jerusalem, Pisgat Ze’ev (pop. 37,000). The new Jerusalem light rail line includes two stops in Shuafat, one of the only neighborhoods with two stops.

A fact-checked sentence should have read:

“…in the ancient Jewish section of the predominantly Arab East ~~Jerusalem~~ neighborhood of Shuafat in Jerusalem…”.

Just saying…