Ministers back bill to cut electricity, water supplies to UNRWA facilities

By Sam Sokol 9 November 2025, 5:39 pm

2 Edit

Sam Sokol is a former political correspondent at The Times of Israel. 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"

MK Yulia Malinovsky sets up a mock parliamentary office inside an UNRWA compound in Jerusalem, May 26, 2025. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)

The Ministerial Committee for Legislation approves a bill sponsored by MK Yulia Malinovsky of the opposition Yisrael Beytenu party, which would 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.

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.

Approval by the committee means the government officially supports a bill and will back it in the Knesset, where it would need to pass an initial vote and three additional readings before becoming law.

In October 2024, lawmakers passed a pair of bills, one of them also sponsored by Malinovsky, barring UNRWA 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.

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

Malinovsky’s new bill states that it aims to clarify that the provision of electrical and water services should be considered “contact” under the law.

The legislation also proposes to 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.”

“This is because entities or individuals continue to own and operate in these complexes in violation of the provisions of the law without any legal right, even though warning letters were delivered by the Israel Lands Authority,” the law’s explanatory notes read.

Israel has previously 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.