An Israeli ban on the lead United Nations agency for Palestinians because of its ties to terror groups, including Hamas, went into effect on Jan. 30, after Israel’s Supreme Court rejected a petition from a rights group opposing the move.
The agency said on Jan. 26 that it had been ordered to vacate its premises and cease all operations in East Jerusalem by Jan. 30.
The U.N. considers East Jerusalem to be occupied territory, but Israel reunified the city and declared the entire city its capital after taking it from Jordan in 1967’s Six-Day War.
Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, passed two laws in late October—one banned UNRWA from operating in Israel and the other terminated all official connections with the agency.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accused UNRWA of collaborating with Hamas.
In January 2024, the Times of Israel reported that Netanyahu had told UN ambassadors in Jerusalem that the agency was “totally infiltrated” by the terrorist organization.
The UNRWA chief told the U.N. Security Council on Jan. 28 that the ban’s implementation would be disastrous.
“In two days our operations in the occupied Palestinian territory will be crippled,” UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said. “Full implementation of the Knesset legislation will be disastrous.”
The U.N. has described UNRWA as the backbone of humanitarian aid to Gaza, heavily damaged in almost 16 months of war between Israel and terror groups led by Hamas.
The United States, under President Donald Trump, now supports Israel’s “sovereign right” to close UNRWA’s offices in Jerusalem, acting U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Dorothy Shea told the Security Council.
The Biden administration had urged Israel to pause implementation of the law.
“UNRWA exaggerating the effects of the laws and suggesting that they will force the entire humanitarian response to halt is irresponsible and dangerous,” Shea said.
She called for “nuanced discussion” on ensuring the continued flow of services through other channels.
“UNRWA is not and never has been the only option for providing humanitarian assistance in Gaza.”
Other agencies also active in Gaza and the West Bank include the children’s agency UNICEF, the World Food Program, the World Health Organization, and the U.N. Development Program.
Lazzarini said UNRWA has delivered two-thirds of all food assistance, sheltered more than 1 million displaced persons, and vaccinated a quarter of a million children against polio.
It has brought in 60 percent of the food reaching more than half a million people in Gaza.
He did not say how much of the food had been diverted by Hamas, which Israel alleges it regularly does.
A UNRWA spokeswoman said the staff’s international employees had visas for the West Bank and East Jerusalem good only through Jan. 29, and if those were not extended they would have to leave.
Nations including the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Germany, Finland, Switzerland, Italy, and the Netherlands have cut off funding to the controversial agency.
Norway, though, announced on Jan. 30 that it would contribute $24 million to the agency, according to the Times of Israel.
The effect of the shutdown remains unclear.
Israeli officials gave conflicting explanations of what would happen to students at UNRWA-run schools in East Jerusalem.
The U.N. fired a dozen of its 30,000 employees in the Middle East—including 13,000 in Gaza, making it the largest employer there—after an investigation showed they had participated in the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israeli border communities and bases that began the war.
Twelve hundred people, mostly Israeli civilians, were killed, thousands wounded, and 250 taken hostage.
Israel’s supporters called the investigation report a whitewash, ignoring UNRWA’s deep complicity with Hamas going back years.
Hamas stores weapons in, near, and under UNRWA facilities such as schools, clinics, and hospitals, using them as human shields, a war crime under the Fourth Geneva Convention.
According to Israel, Hamas has built its extensive terror tunnel system under them. Its members commandeered UNRWA food supplies meant for civilians.
Israel has long accused UNRWA schools of teaching anti-Semitic and anti-Israel hate to Gaza’s children.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in an official podcast on Jan. 29, said one of the young female IDF field observers serving with the five who were freed this week, Noa Marciano, was held as a hostage in the UNRWA-run Shifa Hospital and killed there. Her body was later recovered.
According to an IDF spokeswoman, the hospital’s director said: “Shifa’s main purpose is to be a cover for Hamas before it is a place for people to receive treatment or care or medication.”
She described the hospital as Hamas’s main operational base, a haven to which terrorists returned after the Oct. 7 raid.
The spokeswoman said forensic evidence shows hostages other than Marciano were held there early in the war.
