The Israeli parliament has passed two laws that could prevent the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, which is the main provider of aid in Gaza, from being able to continue its work.
The laws prohibit the agency, UNRWA, from operating and cut all ties between the agency and the Israeli government. It is the culmination of a long-running campaign against the group, which Israel contends has been infiltrated by Hamas. But supporters say Israel's real goal is to sideline the Palestinian refugee issue.
The organization is the main distributor of aid in Gaza and provides education, health and other basic services to millions of Palestinian refugees across the region, including the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
The head of the organization, Commissioner General Philippe Lazzarini, called the move “unprecedented” in X after the vote and said the bills “will only deepen the suffering of the Palestinian people, especially in Gaza where people have spent more than a year in hell. .”
Israel accuses the organization of ignoring the workers it claims belong to Hamas, transferring aid and using UNRWA facilities for military purposes. Israel says about a dozen of its 13,000 personnel in Gaza took part in the October 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel. The organization deliberately denies that it is helping armed groups and says it is taking immediate action to purge any suspected terrorists from its workforce.
Debt is a major handicap for UNRWA
One of the bills passed on Monday evening bans all UNRWA activities and services on Israeli soil and will take effect in three months.
The second bill cuts all ties between government officials and UNRWA and strips its workers of their legal protections.
Together, the bills are likely to prevent the agency from operating in Israel and the Palestinian territories, because Israel controls access to Gaza and the West Bank. It may force the organization to move its headquarters from eastern Israel which is part of Israel.
Lazzarini warned earlier this month that humanitarian operations in Gaza could “disintegrate” if the law passes, disrupting the supply of food, shelter and health care as winter sets in.
Gaza's population of 2.3 million is almost entirely dependent on aid for survival. About 90% of the population has been removed. Hundreds of thousands live in tent camps and schools-turned-camps, most of them run by UNRWA. Experts say that hunger is bad. Israel's operation in Gaza in retaliation for the October 7 attack has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, a figure that does not distinguish between civilians and militants.
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Israel is reportedly considering confiscating the distribution aid or using it, but has yet to come up with a concrete plan. Any such effort would require large numbers of troops and other resources at a time when Israel is facing a two-sided conflict in Gaza and Lebanon.
Other UN agencies and aid organizations say there is no other place for UNRWA, which also runs 96 schools with about 47,000 students, three training centers and 43 health centers in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
A decades-old mission rooted in the bitter history of the conflict
The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East was established to assist the estimated 700,000 Palestinians who fled or were displaced from what is now Israel during the 1948 war surrounding the creation of Israel,
Supporters of UNRWA say Israel hopes to shut down the Palestinian refugee issue by disbanding the organization. Israel says the refugees should be permanently resettled outside their borders.
Palestinians say the refugees and their descendants, now numbering 6 million, should be allowed to exercise their right under international law to return home. Israel refuses, saying the result will be a Palestinian majority within its borders.
The issue was among the worst in the peace process, which stalled in 2009.
UNRWA runs schools, health clinics, infrastructure projects and relief programs in refugee camps that have grown into urban areas in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan.
The long-running dispute over UNRWA's neutrality
Israel claims that hundreds of Palestinian terrorists work for UNRWA, without providing evidence, and that more than a dozen workers participated in the attack by Hamas on October 7, 2023.
UNRWA quickly fired staff suspected of involvement in the October 7 attack, in which Hamas-led terrorists killed around 1,200 people and kidnapped around 250.
An independent investigation earlier this year found that UNRWA has “robust” mechanisms to ensure its neutrality but pointed to gaps in its implementation, including staff expressing political views publicly and textbooks with “problematic content” in UNRWA-run schools.
UNRWA says it thoroughly investigates any allegations of wrongdoing and holds staff accountable, and provides a list of its staff in Israel and participating countries. It says Israel has largely ignored its requests to provide evidence for its claims against the workers.
Israel has repeatedly attacked UN schools that have become shelters, saying that Hamas fighters are operating inside them. It also claims to reveal tunnels that run near or under UNRWA facilities.
UNRWA has long been the single largest employer in Gaza, where people are impoverished due to the Israeli and Egyptian blockade. Hamas has ruled the area since 2007, and has a political system aligned with its armed wing.
Wings of Hamas and other groups are very secretive, their members are unknown outside the intelligence agencies. That complicates efforts by civil society organizations to vet workers.
Fatah Sharif, a UNRWA teacher in southern Lebanon, was killed last month along with his family in an Israeli attack. Then it came out that he was the top commander of Hamas, something he had been hiding.
Lazzarini, head of UNRWA, said Sharif was suspended without pay in March after the agency discovered he was a member of the Hamas political group, and an investigation had been launched. He said he did not know that Sharif was a military commander until his death.
UNRWA has strong international support
Several Western countries suspended funding to UNRWA after allegations related to the October 7 attack. All but the United States, which was the biggest donor, have returned it.
The Biden administration recently warned Israel that if it doesn't allow more aid to Gaza it could lose vital US military aid it has relied on throughout the war.
A letter sent by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to their Israeli counterparts said they shared Israel's concerns about the “serious allegations” of UNRWA staff involved in the October 7 attack and “Hamas' misuse of -UNRWA.”
But it said suspending the debt ceiling would “harm the response of the people of Gaza at this critical time … which could have implications under US law and policy.”
A joint statement from Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea and Britain last week expressed “deep concern” about the law. It said the agency provides “crucial and life-saving assistance,” the provision of which would be “severely hampered, if not impossible” without it.
Frankel and Lidman reported from Jerusalem.
