Accusing the U.N. relief agency of being too close to Hamas, Israel told the United Nations its authorities would no longer work with it.
Israel formally notified the United Nations on Nov. 4 that it was canceling the agreement regulating its relations with the U.N.’s principal agency for Palestinian relief.
Last month, the Israeli Knesset passed legislation banning the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) from operating in Israel and barring Israeli authorities from cooperating with it.
The move came amid growing Israeli concern about UNRWA’s complicity with Hamas, which runs Gaza but which many countries including the United States have designated a terrorist organization. It does not apply to UNRWA operations elsewhere, such as on the West Bank.
Meanwhile, fears arose that the move would worsen Gaza’s humanitarian crisis, making it impossible to feed and shelter thousands left homeless and vulnerable during a war that has gone on for more than a year since Hamas launched its Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
If the Israeli decision is implemented, “this would be a total disaster,” UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said on Oct. 30, after Israel passed the move but before it notified the U.N. “It is like throwing (out) the baby with the water,” he said.
“This would create a vacuum. It would also feed more instability in the West Bank and Gaza. Having UNRWA ending its activities within the three months would also mean more people will die in Gaza.”
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UNRWA has been the leading agency procuring and distributing aid in the Gaza Strip, where much of the population of 2.3 million relies on it for survival as the Israel–Hamas war rages on.
Israel has long been critical of UNRWA, an agency set up in 1949, charging that, unlike other U.N. relief efforts, it doesn’t seek to resettle Palestinian refugees, considers their descendants as refugees, and has a workforce consisting almost entirely of Palestinians. With nearly 30,000 employees, it is the territory’s largest employer.
It also charges that Hamas diverts to its own use much of the food shipped for UNRWA distribution into Gaza and that UNRWA schoolteachers have for decades taught a curriculum teaching children to hate Israel and Jews.
Israel’s U.N. ambassador, Danny Danon, said that despite the overwhelming evidence that Israel “submitted to the U.N. highlighting how Hamas infiltrated UNRWA, the U.N. did nothing to address this reality.”
The U.N. says Israeli claims are unsubstantiated but meanwhile maintains it can’t follow up on evidence Israel provided because the war makes it unable to verify claims.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry said that activities by other international organizations would be expanded and that “preparations will be made to end the connection with UNRWA and to boost alternatives to UNRWA.”
At least 237 UNRWA staff have been killed in the war, more than 200 agency buildings have been damaged, and more than 560 people sheltering in them have been killed.
The U.N. in August fired nine employees accused of participating in Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, raid into Israel, in which about 1,200 people were massacred.
Displaced Palestinians sit on benches as they wait outside a clinic of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, on Jan. 28, 2024. AFP via Getty Images
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
