The European Union is condemning Israel after security forces destroyed EU-funded schools for Palestinian children in the West Bank.

European officials expressed their "strong concern about the recent confiscations of Palestinian school structures undertaken by Israel in Bedouin communities in the occupied West Bank".  The statement added, "Every child has the right to safe access to education and states have an obligation to protect, respect and fulfill this right, by ensuring that schools are inviolable safe spaces for children."

The modular steel and wood buildings in the village of Jabal al-Baba adjacent to al-Azariya were to have been used for kindergarten and elementary education for the Bedouin community in the hills east of Jerusalem.  The kindergarten would have accepted students next month, but the older kids reported to school this week only to find out that it wasn't there.

The Civil Administration said the schools were "illegally last weekend, a blunt violation of stop work orders and without receiving the required permits. Therefore, the confiscation was carried out in accordance to the Civil Administration's authorities".  The kindergarten was "an illegal tin and wood shed was found in (al-Azariya), that was established over the past two weeks without receiving the required permits".  

But the Israeli rights group B'Tselem says this is just part of a pattern of abuse and neglect that the conservative government shows the nomadic Bedouin, who don't have alternative access to the Israeli school system.

"The demolition of a school building the night before the start of the year epitomizes the administrative cruelty and systematic harassment by authorities designed to drive Palestinians from their land," Roy Yellin of B'Tselem said.