From the Liveblog of
Tuesday, July 2, 2024
Knesset committee discusses trio of bills targeting UNRWA shutdown
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"
The Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee is considering merging three bills aimed at significantly curtailing the activities of UNRWA amid a wave of popular anger against the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees in the wake of October 7.
The first bill, proposed by Likud MK Boaz Bismuth, would ban the organization from operating on Israeli territory and would effectively erase its presence in Jerusalem.
The second, promoted by Yisrael Beytenu MK Yulia Malinovsky, would brand UNRWA a terrorist organization and require Israel to cut ties with it.
“UNRWA should not exist at all,” Malinovsky tells the committee, calling it a “branch of Hamas” and stating that it is “a terrorist organization for all intents and purposes.”
The third proposal, by Yesh Atid MK Ron Katz, would strip UNRWA personnel of the legal immunities and privileges afforded to United Nations staff in Israel, such as exemptions from property taxes.
National Security Council legal advisor Adam Wolfson says the Ministerial Committee for Legislation requested that Malinovsky and Katz’s proposals be merged with Bismuth’s.
The legislation should continue to advance with the agreement of relevant ministries so long as they do “not harm Israel’s international obligations or humanitarian aid,” he says.
A Finance Ministry representative informs the committee that any services provided by UNRWA in Jerusalem that would be halted under the bills would have to be covered by the Jerusalem municipality.
A senior official from the Jerusalem Affairs Ministry says it has been working on mapping out all the services provided by UNRWA in Jerusalem for the last six months and knows “exactly which services are required in a situation where UNRWA leaves the region and what gaps and deficiencies exist.”
Israel has accused multiple UNRWA staffers of taking part in Hamas’s attack on October 7, and the IDF found a Hamas data center located directly beneath UNRWA headquarters in Gaza City.
The UN has suspended investigations into several of the accused, claiming that Israel had provided insufficient evidence.
“We remember the atmosphere after October 7 when several countries announced a delay in funding and we felt that there was finally a political success, but as we get further away from the event, more and more countries return to funding [UNRWA], claiming that there is no alternative,” says committee chair Yuli Edelstein.
He gives the relevant government ministries a week to submit comments on the legislation and says he will sit down with Bismuth, Malinovsky and Katz to discuss whether to merge their proposals or advance them separately.
