Qalandiya Training Centre Seized: 5th Raid Since May

The Qalandiya Training Centre was stormed and seized by Israeli forces on Tuesday, August 25, shutting down the last operational UNRWA facility in occupied East Jerusalem and forcibly removing its staff. The centre sits between the Kafr Aqab neighbourhood and the Qalandiya refugee camp. It has provided vocational training to Palestinian refugee teenagers from across the West Bank since 1952.

Ahead of the operation, Israeli forces shut the nearby Qalandiya checkpoint – the main crossing point between East Jerusalem and the northern West Bank. Heavy military reinforcements then moved into the surrounding neighbourhoods and refugee camp. According to a statement from UNRWA, at least four armored vehicles and more than 50 personnel entered the Qalandiya Training Centre compound at around 10 a.m., while roughly 20 UNRWA staff members were still on site.

Qalandiya Training Centre Staff Expelled, Five Wounded

Soldiers ordered every UNRWA employee off the property and told them not to come back, according to reporting from Al Jazeera. The Jerusalem governorate said five Palestinians were wounded by Israeli gunfire near the site during the operation. The circumstances of those injuries have not been independently confirmed.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir joined the raid in person. Speaking from the site, he described the action as an operation to clear the building and declared there was no place for the agency “in Jerusalem and Israel.” On social media, he was blunter still, posting simply: “UNRWA in our hands.”

UNRWA rejected the Israeli position outright. The agency insists the compound remains a United Nations facility under international protection regardless of who currently controls the grounds. In a statement responding to the takeover, UNRWA said: “Its inviolability must be fully respected.”

A Facility Built for Teenagers, Not Politics

The stakes go beyond one building. UNRWA says the centre served around 340 to 350 Palestinian refugee students, most between 15 and 19 years old, drawn from 19 refugee camps across the occupied West Bank. Students received free vocational education, meals and accommodation. For teenagers whose families often have no other access to that kind of training, it was a rare pathway to a trade.

The land itself was made available by the Jordanian government in the early 1950s. That history gives the Qalandiya Training Centre a symbolic weight UNRWA officials say matters as much as its physical infrastructure. That history has done little to shield it. UNRWA has said the facility was raided five times since the start of this year alone, including an incursion on July 27 in which staff were detained and municipal officials photographed offices and training rooms without presenting documentation explaining why.

Some reporting places the true number of incursions this year even higher, describing Tuesday’s seizure as the seventh raid on the site in recent months. That discrepancy reflects how difficult it has become to track the frequency of these operations as they’ve intensified. Representatives from more than 25 diplomatic missions and international organisations had visited the centre just a day before Tuesday’s raid – a sign of how closely watched, and how contested, its fate had already become.

What the Qalandiya Training Centre Raid Means for UNRWA in the West Bank

Tuesday’s seizure did not happen in isolation. It follows legislation passed by the Israeli Knesset in October 2024 that banned UNRWA from operating on Israeli territory and prohibited official contact between Israeli authorities and the agency. That law took effect at the end of January 2025. Israel demolished UNRWA’s Jerusalem headquarters earlier this year. With the Qalandiya centre now shuttered, the agency has effectively lost its last fixed institutional foothold in occupied East Jerusalem.

That loss echoes a broader pattern this outlet has tracked elsewhere in the region – from the disabling of a Gaza desalination plant during ceasefire-era strikes to ongoing debate over foreign troop deployments meant to stabilize Gaza. In each case, institutions meant to serve or protect Palestinian civilians are being reshaped or removed with little consultation.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres condemned what his spokesperson called an “unlawful entry,” noting that this marked the fifth such incursion at the site since May. He cited an International Court of Justice ruling on the inviolability of UN premises and renewed calls for Israel to repeal the law barring UNRWA from operating in the country.

That call for legal frameworks to actually hold echoes a frustration seen in other conflicts too, including debates over what a lasting peace agreement would require in Ukraine, where negotiated terms have also struggled to survive contact with events on the ground.

The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs called the seizure a serious breach of the legal protections UN facilities are meant to enjoy, describing it as a dangerous escalation. Fatah, the Palestinian political movement led by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, issued its own condemnation, arguing that targeting UNRWA amounts to an attack on the broader Palestinian refugee cause.

Current Status

As of Tuesday, UNRWA staff had been barred from the property. Communication between the agency and Israeli authorities over the site had been cut off, according to UNRWA officials cited by Middle East Monitor. The agency has said it could relocate the training programme elsewhere, but officials stressed that preserving the original site was the priority given its decades-long symbolic role for Palestinian refugees.

It remains unclear whether the roughly 340 students enrolled at the centre will be able to continue their training without interruption, or where any replacement facility might be located. The Israeli government has not indicated whether the Qalandiya Training Centre seizure is intended to be permanent.