Despite laws banning it, UNRWA continues to operate almost as usual in East Jerusalem

In late October, the Knesset passed a pair of laws effectively banning the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees from operating within Israeli territory. The legislation also prohibited state officials from cooperating with the organization, in a step deemed likely to radically constrain its activities in the West Bank and Gaza.

Shrugging off international criticism of the measures, Israeli lawmakers celebrated the passage of the laws targeting the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees. “UNRWA terrorists, your story ends here; enemies have no right to exist in the State of Israel,” tweeted MK Boaz Bismuth, a Likud hawk who sponsored the legislation.

But five months later, UNRWA continues to operate in East Jerusalem almost entirely uninterrupted, according to Palestinian sources and the agency itself, with police only taking action in recent days. And the legislation is seen as having had little effect on UNRWA operations in other areas where Israeli cooperation is required.

Shortly after the law went into effect at the end of January, Israel shut down UNRWA’s logistics center in East Jerusalem. But the agency’s service centers across East Jerusalem remain operational.

The main hub of UNRWA’s activity is located in the Shuafat refugee camp, the only Palestinian refugee camp within Israel’s declared sovereign territory and thus subject to the law. Two UNRWA-run schools, several healthcare centers, and social service facilities in Shuafat continue to operate as usual.

“The staff who operate the facilities in the camp say that if the police or army come in with an order to shut the place down, they’ll comply,” said a resident of the Shuafat refugee camp who is an UNRWA aid recipient and who asked not to be identified by name. “But for now, it’s business as usual.”

The agency, which was established in 1948 to provide services to Palestinian refugees and, later, to their descendants, operates primarily inside refugee camps, which have grown in the last 77 years from tent cities into densely packed urban slums.

It also operates outside the camps, providing services to refugees and their descendants living in regular East Jerusalem neighborhoods such as Silwan.

While police and city officials have issued closure orders, including this week, it’s unclear whether actual action is being taken to shutter the facilities.

Asked for comment on Tuesday, an Israel Police spokesperson told The Times of Israel that “the relevant authorities should be contacted,” implying that enforcing the ban fell outside the police force’s purview.

Three weeks ago, representatives from the Israel Police served notice ordering UNRWA’s Kalandia Training Centre in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Kafr Aqab to shut down within 30 days.

That came a month after the same center was ordered to shut down, along with East Jerusalem schools, to little apparent affect.

On Tuesday, UNRWA said that Jerusalem city officials and police served notices to six East Jerusalem schools, apparently also including small educational centers in Silwan and the Old City, ordering them to close within 30 days. The agency complained that the “illegal closure orders” would put the education of 800 students at risk.

As of Wednesday, the schools and the training center were still operating.

According to the city, preparations were made before the law began to be implemented to identify temporary learning locations for the few hundred students enrolled in UNRWA schools, out of 105,000 total students in East Jerusalem.

The municipality said it had contacted parents after the law passed and again once it came into effect, reminding them they could transfer their children to non-UNRWA schools. Communication with parents was facilitated through parent committees, community council activists, and digital announcements.

“Every resident of Jerusalem, including those living in the Shuafat refugee camp, has always had the option to enroll their children in municipal schools — even before the law was passed,” the municipality told The Times of Israel, but denied being responsible for enforcing the ban.

Though the police action did not apparently extend to UNRWA healthcare services, the city also noted that Shuafat residents do not need to rely on UNRWA and have access to Israeli health maintenance organizations and well-child clinics across East Jerusalem.

Perpetuating refugeehood

Israel has long lobbied for UNRWA to be disbanded, accusing it perpetuating Palestinian victimhood and dependency on aid by controversially bestowing refugee status even on descendants of those displaced in Israel’s 1948 War of Independence.

It has also accused the agency, which also operates in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, of adopting virulent anti-Israel ideology in its educational materials and employing members of Palestinian terror groups as teachers, administrators and in other roles.

Palestinian residents of refugee camps who spoke to The Times of Israel emphasized that UNRWA’s role is not only about providing essential services such as education and healthcare, which some refugees indeed receive elsewhere, but that it is also deeply tied to their identity as Palestinians displaced in 1948.

“This is a political and moral issue,” a resident of the Shuafat refugee camp explained. “Having a refugee card from UNRWA is a declaration: I am a refugee. My father had a house and property that were taken from him in the 1948 war, and one day, I will return to my home.”

But despite opposing UNRWA’s existence, Israel also cooperated with the agency, allowing it to operate and provide services in areas under its control, which some officials regarded as a means of keeping Palestinians from sinking into deeper poverty and being drawn into violent activity.

That appeared to change following the October 7, 2023, Hamas massacre, after Jerusalem provided evidence that a number of UNRWA employees participated in slaughtering and kidnapping Israelis and the Israel Defense Forces revealed that Hamas terrorists had maintained a data center directly beneath UNRWA’s Gaza Strip headquarters.

Though most donor countries resumed funding following a brief pause, arguing that the agency was an indispensable distributor of aid during the war in Gaza, the discoveries provided a tailwind for politicians in Jerusalem to take action against the group.

On October 28, Knesset MKs voted 92 to 10 to approve a law barring UNRWA from operating in Israeli territory, and 87-9 in favor of another measure banning state authorities from having any contact with the agency.

While some Israeli political leaders recognized the humanitarian risk and the international backlash that would result, “the political cost of opposing the legislation became too significant to endure,” an Israeli official told The Times of Israel at the time.

Curtailed cooperation

Much of the concern around the laws’ passage revolved around the measure banning cooperation between Israeli officials and UNRWA, which was considered the most important provider of humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip. Experts had warned the law would make it impossible for UNRWA to work in Gaza or the West Bank, since Jerusalem would no longer be issuing entrance permits to those territories or allowing coordination with the IDF, which controls all access into the Strip.

UNRWA confirmed to The Times of Israel that a few senior international staff left the West Bank when the law took effect and now work remotely from Jordan to avoid potential travel restrictions imposed under the new legislation.

However, while UNRWA’s operations in Gaza and the West Bank have been curtailed in recent months, the agency asserts that this reduction is due to Israeli military activity rather than legislative changes.

In the northern West Bank, for instance, UNRWA schools and clinics in refugee camps adjacent to Jenin and Tulkarem were closed due to a major ongoing IDF anti-terror campaign, which has led to the evacuation of tens of thousands of residents. In Gaza, UNRWA schools that had reopened during a ceasefire closed again when fighting resumed a month ago.

In October, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel was eager to replace UNRWA as the main provider of humanitarian aid into the Strip with other international organizations. Even before the legislation, Israel had looked to the World Food Program, UNICEF and other agencies to replace UNRWA.

In March, though, Israel announced it would stop allowing humanitarian aid into the Strip anyway. In the meantime, UNRWA has continued distributing what remains of its humanitarian aid supplies inside the Strip.

The measure halting cooperation could also be linked to reports that the agency is running out of medications in the West Bank, though Salah Haj Yahya, a senior Physicians for Human Rights Israel official, attributed the scarcity to UNRWA’s worsening financial crisis rather than the legislation.

According to PHRI, which provides volunteer medical assistance to Palestinians in the West Bank, the shortage of medication at UNRWA clinics has grown over the last few months.

Haj Yahya, who heads PHRI’s mobile clinic, told The Times of Israel that during the group’s most recent visit to the Balata refugee camp in Nablus, thousands of people turned up seeking medication after being unable to obtain what they needed from UNRWA.

“People came with prescriptions in hand after UNRWA simply couldn’t provide them with the medicines,” he said.

A resident of the Jalazone refugee camp near Ramallah, who requested anonymity, told The Times of Israel that UNRWA clinics in the camp have faced recurring medicine shortages in recent weeks.

“Medicines are available only in the first few days of the month, likely when new supplies arrive, but within five days they run out,” he said.

In a formal response, UNRWA denied that there was a shortage of medicine.

Some aspects of the legislation remain unclear, including whether it forces Israeli banks to shutter accounts held by the agency, which would hamper UNRWA’s ability to pay its employees, who are largely Palestinian residents of the West Bank and Gaza.

UNRWA said its sole Israeli bank account, at Bank Leumi, was frozen at the end of 2024 even before the law took effect. According to the agency, the account was used to pay Israeli vendors for services such as office and telephone expenses, not to pay salaries to Palestinian employees.

The Bank of Israel told The Times of Israel that banks providing services to UNRWA inside the country were liable to be sanctioned.

“The banking system in Israel is required to comply with all relevant legal provisions governing its operations,” a spokesperson said. “The Law for the Termination of UNRWA renders UNRWA’s activity within Israeli territory illegal. Consequently, any financial activity that enables UNRWA’s operations within Israel exposes banking corporations to various risks, including compliance and legal risks, which the banks are required to manage.”