Days after Re'im shelter killer shown to be UNRWA staffer

Israel set to pass laws Monday that will heavily restrict UNRWA in Gaza, West Bank

MKs set to prevent UN’s Palestinian refugee agency from operating in Israel, close Gaza and West Bank access points to it, radically complicating its work there; US, UN, EU object

Sam Sokol is the Times of Israel's political correspondent. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"

A man carries a humanitarian aid package provided by UNRWA in central Gaza City on August 27, 2024. (Omar Al-Qattaa/AFP)
A man carries a humanitarian aid package provided by UNRWA in central Gaza City on August 27, 2024. (Omar Al-Qattaa/AFP)

Despite strong objections from the United Nations, European Union and Biden administration, lawmakers on Monday are slated to approve a pair of laws that will essentially bar UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees and their descendants, from operating in Israel, and severely curtail its activities in Gaza and the West Bank.

The first bill, sponsored by Yisrael Beytenu MK Yulia Malinovsky and Likud lawmaker Dan Illouz, among others, would ban state authorities from having any contact with UNRWA. The second, sponsored by Likud MK Boaz Bismuth, would effectively prevent the organization from operating in Israeli territory by revoking a 1967 exchange of notes providing the basis for its activities.

Without coordination with Israel, it will be almost impossible, in turn, 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. Israel also currently controls access to Gaza from Egypt, with the IDF deployed along the Gaza-Egypt Philadelphi corridor.

Asked to respond to widespread international opposition ahead of Monday’s vote, several of the bills’ sponsors dismissed criticism of their legislation, stating that it is both necessary and just.

The 68-strong coalition is likely to support the legislation; several opposition MKs are also expected to do so.

The expected approval of the legislation in the Knesset follows UNRWA’s confirmation on Thursday that Muhammad Abu Attawi, who led the killing and kidnapping of Israelis from a roadside bomb shelter near Kibbutz Re’im on October 7 last year, had been employed by the agency since July 2022 while serving as a Nukbha commander in Hamas’s Bureij Battalion.

Hamas terrorist Muhammad Abu Attawi and UNRWA staffer during the attack on a bomb shelter near Kibbutz Re’im on October 7, 2023. (Israel Defense Forces)

UNRWA — short for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East — provides education, health care and aid to millions of Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.

Israel alleges that more than 10 percent of UNRWA’s staff in Gaza have ties to terror, and that educational facilities under the organization’s auspices consistently incite hatred of Israel and glorify terror. In February, the IDF revealed the existence of a subterranean Hamas data center directly beneath UNRWA’s Gaza Strip headquarters. The IDF has also repeatedly targeted Hamas command centers and gunmen hiding out in UNRWA schools.

Numerous Israeli lawmakers have long argued that UNRWA must not be allowed to continue operating, with MK Malinovsky previously stating that the agency “should not exist at all.”

Additional legislation advanced by Malinovsky requiring Israel to brand UNRWA a terrorist organization is no longer on the Knesset table.

MK Yulia Malinovsky speaks at a Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee meeting at the Knesset, July 9, 2024. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said that passing the bills would be a “catastrophe,” while European Commission Vice President Josep Borrell recently warned that it “would have disastrous consequences.”

Such a move would prevent UNRWA “from continuing to provide its services and protection to Palestine refugees in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem and Gaza,” Borrell stated.

Similarly, writing to Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer last week, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin expressed concern over the bills.

The senior American officials stated that while they recognized Jerusalem’s concerns over some UNRWA members’ ties to Hamas and involvement in the October 7 onslaught, they believed that the “enactment of such restrictions would devastate the Gaza humanitarian response” as well as the provision of “vital” services in East Jerusalem.

Likud MK Dan Illouz attends a meeting of the Jerusalem lobby at the Knesset, May 17, 2023. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

“The recent revelation that Mohammad Abu Attawi — a Hamas commander and UNRWA employee — personally led the October 7 massacre of civilians at the Re’im shelter is a shocking but unsurprising confirmation of what Israel has long known: UNRWA is deeply complicit in terror,” said Likud’s Illouz.

“This agency employs hundreds of Hamas operatives and routinely allows its facilities to be used as command centers and weapons depots. UNRWA doesn’t just harbor terrorists — it educates Palestinian youth to hate, fueling a dangerous cycle of violence that obstructs any path to peace,” he argued, insisting that “instead of fostering stability, UNRWA entrenches the conflict, keeping millions of Palestinians in a state of dependency and using the inflated refugee numbers as a political weapon against Israel.”

“My legislation aims to end this exploitation, dismantling a toxic agency that sustains conflict rather than resolves it,” Illouz said.

People gather to search the rubble of a collapsed building in the aftermath of an Israeli strike on what the IDF says were Hamas operatives hiding in the Al-Jaouni UNRWA school in central Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp, July 6, 2024. (Eyad Baba / AFP)

Claims that the legislation would specifically prohibit UNRWA from operating in the territories are incorrect, even though they would significantly hamper its activities, a spokesman for MK Malinovsky told The Times of Israel on Friday.

“After the bill passes, UNRWA can work in Gaza and the West Bank, although it will not be able to operate in Israel,” and the borders between Israel, Gaza and the West Bank “will be closed to them,” the spokesman explained, adding dryly that UNRWA staffers “can use parachutes” to get in.

“The UNRWA workers’ organization is controlled by Hamas and Islamic Jihad. So they have a connection between Hamas and UNRWA. And therefore, we don’t want to have a connection with them,” the spokesman stated.

Israel had been extremely critical of UNRWA long before the Hamas invasion and slaughter in southern Israel on October 7, 2023, saying that its near uniqueness in the world — granting refugee status not just to the first generation of refugees but to their descendants — perpetuated the conflict and a culture of dependence among Palestinians. At the same time, some Israeli politicians and officials saw the relief that the agency provided as a means of keeping the Gaza Strip, and parts of the West Bank, from deeper poverty and thus greater violence and terrorism.

MK Boaz Bismuth at a committee meeting in the Knesset, December 13, 2022. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Asked about his legislation banning UNRWA from operating on Israeli territory — which would have a much more limited impact than that of Malinovsky’s bill — MK Bismuth told The Times of Israel that “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”

“There’s no reason whatsoever that UNRWA is functioning in Israel. With all due respect, we’re a sovereign country, and we can deal with our citizens,” he said, insisting that Israel could and should take over the UN agency’s activities in East Jerusalem.

Responding to Blinken’s concerns, Bismuth insisted that Israel “would never embarrass America” and that “there will not be a vacuum.”

Jerusalem, he argued, has been providing unprecedented quantities of humanitarian aid to Gaza, and “if we do that in Gaza, after October 7, do you expect us not to give services” to the residents of East Jerusalem?

“On the contrary, not only will [Israel provide] services, it will give better services” than UNRWA, he claimed. “And I think that if the secretary of state would have been an MK in the Likud on the seventh of October, he would have done this thing” as well.

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