Knesset advances bill to block provision of electricity, water to UNRWA facilities

Following a 2024 law that shuttered agency’s operations in Jerusalem, the amendment would let Israel cut utilities and seize properties to further restrict its presence

By Ariela Karmel

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and Sam Sokol 19 November 2025, 7:25 pm

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Tents at a makeshift camp for people displaced by conflict are pictured in the football pitch of a school run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on September 30, 2025. (Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)

A government-backed bill to prohibit the provision of electricity or water to facilities owned by or operated on behalf of UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees and their descendants, passed its first reading in the Knesset Wednesday with 28 lawmakers voting in favor and 8 against.

UNRWA — 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 has barred UNRWA from operating on its soil after accusing employees of participating in the October 7, 2023, attack by Hamas, and of inciting against it.

The new amendment would formalize a process requiring electricity and water providers to withhold or disconnect service from any property whose registered consumer name is UNRWA, unless the registered party submits a sworn declaration that they do not represent or act on behalf of the agency.

The legislation also would allow the government to seize properties in Ma’alot Dafna and Kafr Aqab in Jerusalem, which had been leased to UNRWA by the state and used as the agency’s offices, “without the need to initiate legal or administrative proceedings.”

The bill will now proceed to committee, where it will be prepared for additional readings before becoming law.

MKs during a plenum session at the Knesset, in Jerusalem, November 19, 2025. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

The measure is an amendment to two bills passed by lawmakers in October 2024, barring the agency from operating in Israeli territory and curtailing its activities in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank by banning state authorities from having any contact with the agency.

The agency continued to operate for some time after the bills’ passage, but its facilities in East Jerusalem were eventually shuttered.

The new bill aims to clarify that the provision of electrical and water services should be considered “contact” under the law.

It also reflects Israel’s escalating effort to remove UNRWA’s presence from Jerusalem and assert direct state control over properties used by the agency.

Palestinian schoolgirls leave a UNRWA school in the Shuafat refugee camp in East Jerusalem on May 8, 2025, as Israeli security forces prepared to close the school. (Ahmad GHARABLI / AFP)

Israel has alleged that more than 10 percent of UNRWA’s staff in Gaza have ties to terrorist factions, and that educational facilities under the organization’s auspices consistently incite hatred of Israel and glorify terror.

In February 2024, 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.

A number of freed hostages have also testified after returning to Israel that they were held in captivity in UNRWA schools and facilities.

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.