What you should know about Israel's new laws banning UNRWA

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Israel's parliament has passed two laws that could prevent the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, a main aid donor to Gaza, from continuing its work.

The laws prohibit UNRWA from operating and cut all ties between the organization and the Israeli government. It is the culmination of a long-running campaign against the agency, which Israel claims was infiltrated by Hamas. But supporters say Israel's real goal is to ignore the problem of Palestinian refugees.

The organization is the main distributor of aid in Gaza, providing education, health care and other basic services to millions of Palestinian refugees throughout the region, including in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

The agency's head, Commissioner General Philippe Lazzarini, called the move on have been through hell.” .”

Israel accuses the agency of turning a blind eye to employees allegedly affiliated with Hamas, diverting aid and using UNRWA facilities for military purposes. Israel says about a dozen of its 13,000 personnel in Gaza were involved in the attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023. The agency denies knowingly supporting armed groups and says it is acting quickly to eliminate suspected militants from its personnel.

The draft laws significantly hinder UNRWA

One of the draft laws passed on Monday evening bans all UNRWA activities and services on Israeli soil and is expected to come into force in three months.

The second bill cuts all ties between government employees and UNRWA and strips its employees of their legal immunity.

Taken together, the draft legislation likely prohibits the agency from operating in Israel and the Palestinian territories, as Israel controls access to both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. It could force the agency to move its headquarters from Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem.

Lazzarini warned earlier this month that humanitarian operations in Gaza could “disintegrate” if the law is passed, affecting the provision of food, shelter and health care as winter approaches.

The approximately 2.3 million residents of Gaza are almost entirely dependent on aid to survive. About 90% of the population was repressed. Hundreds of thousands live in tent camps and schools converted into emergency shelters, most of which are run by UNRWA. Experts say hunger is widespread. According to Gaza's Ministry of Health, which does not differentiate between civilians and militants, more than 43,000 Palestinians were killed in Israel's campaign in Gaza in retaliation for the Oct. 7 attack.

Israel is reportedly being considered The organization either handles the distribution of relief supplies itself or subcontracts it out, but has not yet presented a concrete plan. Such an effort would likely require large numbers of troops and other resources at a time when Israel is waging war on two fronts in Gaza and Lebanon.

Other U.N. agencies and aid groups say there is no replacement for UNRWA, which also runs 96 schools with about 47,000 students, three vocational 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 Middle East was founded to help the estimated 700,000 Palestinians who have fled or been displaced from what is now Israel over time the 1948 war over the creation of Israel,

UNRWA supporters say Israel hopes to eliminate the Palestinian refugee problem by disbanding the organization. Israel says the refugees should be permanently resettled outside its borders.

The Palestinians demand that refugees and their descendants, who now number almost six million, be allowed to exercise their right under international law to return to their homeland. Israel refuses, saying the result would be a Palestinian majority within its borders.

The issue was one of the most sensitive in the peace process, which came to a standstill in 2009.

UNRWA runs schools, health clinics, infrastructure projects and assistance programs in refugee camps that have become neighborhoods in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan.

A long-standing dispute over the neutrality of UNRWA

Israel says Hundreds of Palestinian militants without providing evidence, and that more than a dozen employees were involved in the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023.

UNRWA immediately fired staff accused of involvement in the Oct. 7 attack in which Hamas-led militants killed about 1,200 people and kidnapped about 250.

An independent investigation Earlier this year, UNRWA noted that UNRWA had “robust” mechanisms in place to ensure its neutrality, but pointed to gaps in implementation, including personnel publicly expressing political views and textbooks with “problematic content.” UNRWA-run schools.

UNRWA says it thoroughly investigates all allegations of misconduct, holds staff accountable and that it provides lists of all its staff to Israel and host countries. It says Israel has largely ignored its demands to provide evidence of its allegations against employees.

Israel has repeatedly attacked UN schools converted into emergency shelters, claiming Hamas militants operate there. It is also said that tunnels have been discovered running near or under UNRWA facilities.

UNRWA has long been the largest single employer in Gaza, where the population has been impoverished by years of Israeli and Egyptian blockade. Hamas has ruled the area since 2007 and, in addition to its armed wing, also carries out civilian political operations.

The militant wings of Hamas and other groups are extremely secretive, with their members virtually unknown outside of the intelligence community. This complicates civil organizations' efforts to vet employees.

Fatah Sharif, a UNRWA teacher in southern Lebanon, was killed along with his family in an Israeli airstrike last month. Then it turned out it was him a senior Hamas commandersomething he had kept secret.

Lazzarini, UNRWA chief, said Sharif was suspended without pay in March after the agency learned he belonged to the Hamas political party and that an investigation had been launched. He said he knew Sharif was a militant commander only after his death.

UNRWA has strong international support

Several Western countries stopped funding UNRWA after allegations were made in connection with the October 7 attack. All but the United States, which was its largest donor, have since restored it.

The Biden administration recently warned Israel that if it did not allow more aid into Gaza, it could lose some of the vital American military aid on which it relied during the war.

The 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's involvement in the October 7 attack and about “the abuse of UNRWA facilities by Hamas.”

But it said that implementing the law's restrictions “would devastate humanitarian assistance in Gaza at this critical moment… which could impact relevant U.S. laws and policies.”

A joint statement from Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea and Britain expressed “serious concerns” about the legislation last week. It said the agency provides “essential and life-saving humanitarian assistance” that without it would be “significantly difficult, if not impossible,” to provide.

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Frankel and Lidman reported from Jerusalem.

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This version corrects that the agency was not classified as a terrorist organization.

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