EU crisis management chief slams Israeli settler attack on school

BRUSSELS — The European Union's commissioner in charge of the bloc's crisis management condemned on Wednesday an attack by Israeli settlers on a school in Zanuta, a Palestinian village situated in the Israeli military-occupied West Bank.

Violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank has increased since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel.

"Israeli settlers demolished a school in Zamuta, a village in the occupied Palestinian territory," Janez Lenarcic, the EU's Commissioner for Crisis Management, wrote on social media platform X, using an alternative spelling for Zanuta.

"The school was built by EU funds — because every child, everywhere has a right to education. This destruction is intolerable and a violation of International Humanitarian Law," added Lenarcic, who also deals with humanitarian aid.

BBC journalists visited the site of the school which was bulldozed along with most of the village's houses and reported that Zanuta's 200 Palestinian residents had fled nearly a month ago, pressured by threats of violence from Israeli settlers living nearby.

Earlier this week, the United States began imposing visa bans on people involved in violence in the West Bank, after it and other countries appealed to Israel to do more to prevent violence by extremist Jewish settlers against Palestinians.

The Israel military occupied the West Bank, which Palestinians see as the core of an independent state, in a 1967 Middle East war. Israeli settlers have since built settlements there that most countries deem illegal. Israel disputes this and cites historical and biblical ties to the land.

The West Bank is home to three million Palestinians who live among more than half a million Israeli settlers. Continued settlement expansion is one of the most contentious issues between Israel, Palestinians and the international community.