Three schools for Palestinian children in the West Bank have been destroyed by Israeli authorities, the Norwegian Refugee Council has said. 

The facilities, which include the only kindergarten available to the Jabal Al Baba Bedouin community, were demolished just as children were due to return to class following their summer holidays. 

All three were destroyed between Monday and Tuesday of this week, the NRC said, with Israeli authorities also dismantling solar panels at a primary school in Abu Niwar, they added. Third grade students there now take their classes in the local barbershop.

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“It was heart breaking to see children and their teachers turning up for their first day of school under the blazing sun, with no classrooms or anywhere to seek shelter in, while in the immediate vicinity the work to expand illegal settlements goes on uninterrupted,” said NRC policy manager Itay Epshtain, who visited Jubbet Al Dhib this week. 

“Just when they were due to return to the classroom, Palestinian children are discovering that their schools are being destroyed,” said the NRC country director for Palestine, Hanibal Abiy Worku.

Students attend class in a makeshift tent following the destruction of their school. Photo: NRC

“What threat do these schools pose to the Israeli authorities? What are they planning to achieve by denying thousands of children their fundamental right to education?”

Some 55 schools in the West Bank are currently threatened with demolition and stop-work orders by Israeli authorities, with a lack of planning permits often cited as grounds for demolition. 

Critics of Israel counter by arguing that Palestinian permit requests in Area C - which makes up 60 per cent of the West Bank and is controlled by Israel - are routinely denied, leaving them with little option but to build illegally. 

In the first three months of this year there were 24 cases of direct attacks against schools. Last year, four educational facilities were demolished or confiscated. 

Since 2011, friction has arisen over funding for schools which decline to teach an Israeli curriculum, which varies distinctly in the way it teaches the region's history from a Palestinian one. The EU has spoken critically about Israeli settlement policies, saying last February that Israel should "cease the policy of settlement construction and expansion, of designating land for exclusive Israeli use and of denying Palestinian development." 

Those words were echoed by the UN, which has said that Israel should "rescind all policies and practices that lead to the forcible transfer of Palestinian Bedouin families," while the USA has said it is "concerned" about Israeli demolition policies in the West Bank.