Laws passed in October went into effect, barring the U.N. agency from the Jewish state and barring state officials from communicating with the group.
Canaan Lidor
(JNS)
Laws that ban UNRWA in Israel went into effect on Thursday, barring the United Nations aid agency for Palestinians from maintaining a presence or activities in that country, and prohibiting Israeli officials from engaging in contact with it.
Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel welcomed the development.
“UNRWA lies at the heart of the Arab-Jewish conflict. It has always been a non-neutral political organization, and it actually paved the way for October 7th. Any other country in the world would have shut down such an organization within 24 hours of its employees having massacred civilians. I will continue to do everything in my power to bring about the complete closure of the organization,” she tweeted.
On Oct. 28, the Knesset passed, by large majorities, two laws banning UNRWA following the exposure of UNRWA staff complicity in Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre, and despite pressure from the United States and other countries against the move. Three months later, the laws have come into effect.
The ban is by far the most robust step ever taken by Israel against UNRWA, whose largest donors have been the United States and the European Union. The agency has for decades been accused of providing cover and income to Palestinian terrorists while undermining peace efforts, including via its schools’ curriculum.
Jerusalem Deputy Mayor Aryeh King celebrated the development by uncorking a bottle of sparkling wine outside the shuttered UNRWA office in Jerusalem’s northeastern Ma’alot Dafna neighborhood.
“It’s a happy, special and historic day,” he said, popping open the bottle to cheers from supporters.
Shai Glick from the B’tsalmo human rights group attended the event and spray-painted over the sign of the former UNRWA offices. UNRWA, or the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, “has an impressive-sounding name, but it’s just a terrorist group,” Glick said.
Engaged in terrorism
According to Israel, hundreds of UNRWA workers have engaged in terrorism in recent years, including the killers of Yonatan Samerano, an IDF soldier slain on Oct. 7, 2023, whose body was taken to Gaza. Israel identified one of them as UNRWA social worker Faisal Ali Mussalem al Naami.
On Jan. 20, President Donald Trump temporarily suspended U.S. foreign aid to UNRWA, pending reviews of existing development programs. Several countries froze their funding to UNRWA, which usually enjoy a budget of about $1 billion annually. Only the U.S. and New Zealand have not reinstated their funding. Switzerland reinstated it only partially, according to UN Watch, a watchdog group based in Geneva.
On Saturday, Israel notified the United Nations it must evacuate all UNRWA premises by Jan. 30.
UN Watch wrote in a recent report that UNRWA officials meet “routinely” with Lebanese and Gazan terrorist groups, “mutually praise each other for ‘cooperation’ and describe each other as ‘partners.’”
Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general of UNRWA, said that the agency will continue to deliver on its mandate until it physically cannot do so.
UNRWA caters to several millions of people it defines as refugees in Judea and Samaria, Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. Israel’s laws may complicate its ability to bring goods and staff into Judea and Samaria and Gaza.
Through UNRWA, the United Nations employs a unique refugee definition for Palestinians. UNRWA defines as refugees not only those who fled the war in 1948 but their descendants in perpetuity, until a “just solution” emerges for their status. The United Nations has a different definition for all other refugees, who cannot give the title to their descendants and often lose it when they are naturalized elsewhere.
Critics of the UNRWA definition say it’s designed to perpetuate the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Image: B’tsalmo CEO Shai Glick (right) and a fellow activist paint over the UNRWA sign at the agency’s former office in Jerusalem’s Ma’alot Dafna neighborhood on Jan. 30, 2025. Photo by Aron Leib Abrams/Flash90.
