Knesset votes to bar UNRWA from operating in Israeli territory

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"

Activists protest against the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), outside its offices in Jerusalem, March 27, 2024. (Yonatan Sindel/ Flash90)
Activists protest against the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), outside its offices in Jerusalem, March 27, 2024. (Yonatan Sindel/ Flash90)

Despite widespread international opposition, lawmakers vote 92 to 10 to approve a bill that effectively prevents UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees and their descendants, from operating in Israeli territory by revoking a 1967 exchange of notes providing the basis for its activities.

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.

The measure is one of a pair of bills advanced by lawmakers to curtail UNRWA’s activities. The other, sponsored by Yisrael Beytenu MK Yulia Malinovsky and Likud lawmaker Dan Illouz, would ban state authorities from having any contact with UNRWA, a move that would effectively severely curtail its activities in Gaza and the West Bank.

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.”

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin have also expressed concern over the bills, stating that the “enactment of such restrictions would devastate the Gaza humanitarian response,” as well as the provision of “vital” services in East Jerusalem.

Speaking with The Times of Israel last week, Likud MK Boaz Bismuth, the bill’s sponsor, said that “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.”

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.

Arguing against the restrictions on UNRWA during a debate prior to this evening’s vote, Hadash-Ta’al MK Ahmad Tibi claimed that the bill was “fascist” legislation.

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