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Ireland and more than a dozen international partners are pressing Israel to pay for the destruction of a jointly funded school in the occupied West Bank, after Israeli settlers bulldozed the facility serving a Bedouin community in the Jordan Valley earlier this week, Irish Foreign Minister Helen McEntee said Friday.
The Hamamat al-Maleh school, which served approximately 60 children from surrounding herding communities, was demolished along with most other structures in the small Bedouin settlement on Tuesday evening, according to the West Bank Protection Consortium (WBPC), an alliance of international NGOs and donor governments that partially funds humanitarian infrastructure across Area C of the West Bank.
McEntee called the destruction of the school "not only unacceptable, it is indefensible," adding that she was "appalled and deeply angered" by the reported demolition of homes and critical civilian infrastructure. "That this community had already been forcibly displaced makes these actions all the more egregious," she said.
The school had been co-funded and refurbished with support from Ireland and 11 EU member states, namely Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Spain, and Sweden, alongside Canada, the United Kingdom, and the EU's humanitarian agency DG ECHO.
Ireland's Department of Foreign Affairs said it "will formally demand full reimbursement from the Israeli authorities for the destruction of the EU- and donor-funded school and associated structures." The department also noted a significant increase in violent settler activity in the area in recent days.
Local activists and rights groups, including the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem, said settlers entered the community with bulldozers and demolished the school alongside other structures.
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the last three remaining Palestinian households in the community, comprising 15 people including six children, were fully displaced as a result.
The demolition was the culmination of months of reported harassment and attacks on the school. Activists say settlers vandalized the building in March, stealing equipment, smashing solar panels, damaging security cameras and destroying water infrastructure.
According to the Tubas district director of education, repeated settler intimidation of students and staff had already forced the school to suspend operations earlier this year before its physical destruction.
Hamamat al-Maleh sits in Area C of the West Bank, a designation established under the 1993 Oslo Accords that covers roughly 60 percent of the territory and places it under full Israeli civil and security control.
The international community considers Area C part of the occupied Palestinian territories, and building permits there are extremely difficult for Palestinians to obtain, a reality rights groups say has long been used to justify demolitions of Palestinian-built or donor-funded structures.
OCHA noted that Hamamat al-Maleh is one of six communities in Tubas governorate that have been fully displaced since 2023, and that more than 2,500 Palestinians across the West Bank have been displaced by demolitions, settler attacks, and evictions so far in 2026, more than 1,100 of them children.
The current demand follows an earlier, unresolved claim. In February, Ireland and its WBPC partners formally sought 1.7 million euros, roughly $1.99 million, in compensation from Israeli authorities for humanitarian assets destroyed or seized since 2015. No payment has been received.
The WBPC was established in 2015 and is led by the Norwegian Refugee Council, working with a network of international NGOs and bilateral donors to support vulnerable Palestinian communities in Area C.
Its members have previously documented repeated stop-work orders, demolitions, and confiscations targeting education infrastructure across the northern Jordan Valley.
McEntee framed Israel's actions in the strongest terms, saying the targeting of vulnerable communities and essential services "represents a grave violation of international humanitarian law and an assault on basic human dignity."
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