Locals told Ma'an that Israeli forces surrounded the school -- which has been threatened with demolition by the Israeli government for years -- as faculty and students were prevented from accessing the building.
Israeli soldiers imposed a military closure on Khan al-Ahmar before they stormed the village's school to deliver the demolition warrants, sources said.
Official Palestinian news agency Wafa meanwhile reported that Israeli authorities also issued demolition order against 40 Palestinian-owned houses in Khan al-Ahmar on Sunday morning.
Eid al-Jahalin, a witness, told Wafa that Israeli forces raided the area in the early dawn hours and notified residents that they had until Feb. 23 to leave their homes.
In response to a request for comment, a spokesperson for the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), the Israeli agency responsible for implementing Israeli policies in Palestinian territory, confirmed that "construction termination warrants" were issued against an unspecified number of buildings in Khan al-Ahmar, adding that enforcement of the orders "will take place in coordination with state directives and required legal certifications," wihtout providing further details.
Palestinian Minister of Education Sabri Saydam denounced the Israeli raid on the school, describing it as a "systematic and abusive procedure.”
The raid came as the latest in a years-long legal battle waged by the Israeli government and residents of illegal Israeli settlements surrounding Khan al-Ahmar to demolish and relocate the school, which was built in 2009 with the assistance of an Italian NGO, Vento Di Terra, using ecological methods including construction out of used tires.
In August last year, after reports emerged that the Israeli prime minister's office ordered the school to be closed down, the Israeli Supreme Court ordered that the state of Israel provide a formal opinion on the school the following week.
In October, the state postponed issuing a decision at the Supreme Court for four months.
Now, some four months later, the status of case remained unclear. A spokesperson for the Israeli Justice Ministry told Ma’an they were looking into the details of the case.
The Israeli NGO Rabbis For Human Rights, who assists the Khan al-Ahmar community with legal and other support and confirmed reports of Sunday's raid, had previously speculated that Israel was avoiding making a decision as a result of the immense international pressure not to demolish the school, which has become one of the most high-profile targets of Israel's massive demolition campaign against Palestinian homes and livelihood structures.
Khan al-Ahmar, like other Bedouin communities in the region, is under threat of relocation by Israel for being located in the contentious “E1 corridor” set up by the Israeli government to link annexed East Jerusalem with the mega settlement of Maale Adumim.
Israeli authorities plan to build thousands of homes for Jewish-only settlements in E1, which would effectively divide the West Bank and make the creation of a contiguous Palestinian state -- as envisaged by the two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict -- almost impossible.
Rights groups and Bedouin community members have sharply criticized Israel's relocation plans for the Bedouin residing near the illegal Israeli settlement of Maale Adumim, claiming that the removal would displace indigenous Palestinians for the sake of expanding Israeli settlements across the occupied West Bank in violation of international law.
Meanwhile, discussion of an Israeli bill seeking to annex Maale Adumim was postponed last month, reportedly until after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump held their first meeting after Trump's inauguration.
The meeting took place Wednesday, when Trump notably said that the US was no longer necessarily committed to the two-state solution as the sole way out of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
While members of the international community have rested the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the discontinuation of illegal Israeli settlements and the establishment of a two-state solution, a growing number of Palestinian activists have criticized the two-state solution as unsustainable and unlikely to bring durable peace given the existing political context, proposing instead a binational state with equal rights for Israelis and Palestinians.
