
Workers of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) prepare medical aid for distribution to shelters, Deir al-Balah, November 4, 2023. (Photo: Suliman El-Fara/APA Images)
The Israeli Knesset passed a bill on Monday, October 28, banning the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) in Israel and East Jerusalem.
The bill was introduced by two Knesset members, Canadian-born Dan Illouz from the Likud party and Ukrainian-born Yulia Malinovski from the Yisrael Beiteinu party. It was first passed by the Knesset’s Security and Foreign Affairs Committee in mid-October. The 120-seat Knesset voted on the bill on Monday in a final reading, with an overwhelming majority of 92 votes in favor and only 10 against, passing it into law. It is scheduled to enter into force in 90 days.
The law bans all UNRWA’s activities, including offering vital services to Palestinian refugees. It also bans all Israeli officials from communicating with UNRWA, orders the closure of its offices, and revokes all tax exemptions, diplomatic status, and entry visas to UNRWA and its staff.
The law specifically bans UNRWA’s activities “in the territory of Israel.” UNRWA’s activities are mostly in the West Bank and Gaza, and its main offices are in East Jerusalem, all of which are not part of Israel’s territory under international law. However, Israel annexed East Jerusalem in 1981, which makes the law applicable to UNRWA’s offices and facilities there.
However, Israel also effectively controls the West Bank and Gaza and treats the West Bank as part of its territory, although it hasn’t yet officially annexed it. In other words, what this law means for UNRWA’s main activities in these areas remains unclear.
“If Israel decides to apply this law in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, it would mean that more than 2.9 million Palestinians in some 30 refugee camps will no longer have schools, medical attention, garbage collection, and other municipal services,” Lubna Shomali, director of the BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights, told Mondoweiss.
As Israel continues its campaign to forcibly depopulate northern Gaza, and its leaders openly call for the official annexation of the West Bank, it is conceivable that Israel could apply its ban on UNRWA in these areas as well. This move would effectively end a large part of UNRWA’s work and the services that it has provided for 76 years, putting millions of Palestinian refugees at risk.
The Israeli campaign against UNRWA
The law comes after months of Israeli attempts to discredit UNRWA, including the accusation that 12 of its employees participated in the October 7 attacks. An independent UN panel that reviewed Israel’s allegations, as well as the EU humanitarian affairs chief, said that Israel had provided no evidence for its allegations. However, Israel still put diplomatic pressure on UN member countries to cut UNRWA’s funds.
The campaign against UNRWA has included the United States as well. In 2018, the Trump administration officially cut U.S. funds to UNRWA as part of a series of moves that targeted core elements of the Palestinian cause, including recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, recognizing Israel’s settlements in the West Bank, and recognizing Israel’s annexation of the occupied Syrian Golan Heights — all of which contradicted international law and longstanding U.S. positions. The Biden administration reinstated some of the funding from the Trump cuts but did not bring it back to its previous level.
The attacks on UNRWA during the Trump administration were seen as an attempt to undermine Palestinian refugees’ right to return. The U.S. echoed Israeli claims that Palestinian refugees draw their refugee status from UNRWA, and thus doing away with the agency would undo those rights as well.
“The status of refugees is independent of the existence of UNRWA, and under international law, it gives refugees the right to choose between return, resettlement, or integration, but as long as they don’t enjoy the freedom to choose, their status remains valid and they have the right to humanitarian assistance, and this is true for all refugees in the world,” BADIL’s Shomali explained to Mondoweiss.
“This right is collective for all Palestinian refugees because, in the case of Palestinians, it is linked to their national right of self-determination. But it is also an individual, basic human right that no political compromise by any authority can cancel. UNRWA represents the international recognition of this legal and political reality, and this is why Israel has been trying to liquidate UNRWA for so long,” she pointed out.
Reacting to the Knesset’s vote, UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini sent a letter to the UN General Assembly’s president, Philemon Yang, calling on the UNGA to intervene to stop the implementation of the law. The letter warned that the law would have a “dangerous” impact on humanitarian efforts in Gaza, where all the population has been displaced and depends on humanitarian aid.
Lazzarini added that the situation in Gaza is “beyond diplomatic language,” noting that “no entity other than UNRWA can deliver education to 660,000 boys and girls. An entire generation of children will be sacrificed.”
Earlier, Lazzarini wrote on his account on X that the Israeli law is nothing less than “collective punishment,” adding that ending UNRWA services “will not strip the Palestinians from their refugee status,” which is protected by UN General Assembly Resolution 194 passed in 1949, stating that Palestinian refugees have the right to return and compensation.
UNRWA on the ground
UNRWA currently works in 58 recognized Palestinian refugee camps in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon, serving more than 5.9 million Palestinian refugees. UNRWA’s services include 706 schools, which offer elementary, middle school, and in some cases, high school education to more than 660,000 children and teenagers. UNRWA also runs 147 medical centers, with an average of seven medical visits per person every year. These centers offer low-cost and free basic medicines to low-income residents of refugee camps.
In Gaza, UNRWA is the largest humanitarian assistance organization, as 78% of Gaza’s population are 1948 refugees and their descendants. During the ongoing Israeli genocide, the agency played a central role in humanitarian efforts to assist Gaza’s population, which has been almost entirely displaced, many becoming refugees for the third time in their lifetimes.
In recent months, the UN launched a mass vaccination campaign for children to face the spread of Polio, which has made a virulent resurgence in Gaza throughout the ongoing genocide due to Israel’s destruction of sanitary systems. Although the campaign was planned and run by UNICEF and the WHO, the logistical execution of the campaign was mostly carried out by the over 1,200 UNRWA employees in Gaza, since the agency has the largest number of UN employees in the strip.
On Tuesday, UNICEF said in a statement that the banning of UNRWA through the newly passed Israeli law could result in “the collapse of the humanitarian system” in Gaza, which puts the lives of more children at risk.
On Monday, the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on Israel to “act consistently with its obligations under the Charter of the UN and international law,” adding that “national legislation cannot alter those obligations.”
Amnesty International said in a statement that the Israeli law amounts to the “criminalization of humanitarian aid,” while on Saturday, 52 international humanitarian organizations signed a “global appeal to save UNRWA.”
The appeal stressed that Israel’s actions against the agency, including the voting of the anti-UNRWA bills into law, are “part of the wider strategy of the government of Israel to delegitimize UNRWA, discredit its support for Palestine refugees, and undermine the international legal framework protecting their rights, including the right of return,” adding that “if passed, these laws will severely impact not only UNRWA’s operations but also the rights of Palestinian refugees.”
“UN member countries have to put real pressure on Israel and suspend economic and diplomatic ties if necessary to save UNRWA,” Lubna Shomali told Mondoweiss. “If Israel gets away with banning an international institution created by a UN resolution, then what could stop it from banning Palestinian civil society institutions and other international organizations? Who would be next?”