Israel's lawmakers advance legislation to shut down Palestinian relief agency UNRWA
Bill would ban UN’s Palestinian aid agency from operating in Israel, remove employees’ legal immunities, and brand it a terrorist organization
The Knesset on Monday approved the first reading of a trio of bills aimed at shutting down UNRWA, amid a wave of popular anger against the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees and their descendants in the wake of the October 7 attack and the ongoing war.
The first bill, which would ban the organization from operating on Israeli territory, passed 58-9, while the second, aimed at stripping UNRWA personnel of the legal immunities and privileges afforded to United Nations staff in Israel, was approved 63-9.
The third, which would brand UNRWA — short for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East — a terrorist organization and require Israel to cut ties with it, passed 50-10 in the Knesset plenum.
All three bills will now be returned to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee for preparation for the second and third readings necessary for the legislation to become law.
Yisrael Beytenu MK Yulia Malinovsky, who sponsored the legislation branding UNRWA a terrorist organization, welcomed the vote, stating that “there is not a day that the IDF spokesperson does not publish new findings from the field that link UNRWA to terrorism.”
“UNRWA is an organization that supports terrorism, teaches hatred, and serves as a shelter for terrorists,” declared Likud MK Dan Illouz, one of the authors of the bill stripping the agency’s employees of immunity.
“While the State of Israel asks the world to stop funding UNRWA, it actually subsidizes it through property tax discounts and other benefits that arise from the immunity of the organization. It’s time to put an end to this nightmare — cancel UNRWA immunity, stop its funding, and close it down once and for all. Terrorism cannot be given immunity,” he said.
While UNRWA provides education, health and aid to millions of Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, Israel has accused multiple agency staffers of taking part in Hamas’s attack on October 7, in which some 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage.
During its operations in Gaza, the IDF has found a Hamas data center located directly beneath UNRWA headquarters in Gaza City, in addition to numerous findings indicating use of the agency’s assets for terror purposes.
Of the initial 12 employees accused by Israel, UNRWA fired 10 people and said the remaining two are dead. The UN later suspended investigations into several of the accused, claiming that Israel had provided insufficient evidence.
According to Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, of the 13,000 UNRWA employees in Gaza, at least 12% are affiliated with the Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terror groups, including 1,468 employees active in Hamas and PIJ. Of those, 185 UNRWA workers were active in the military branches of Hamas, and 51 in the PIJ military branch.
During a debate over the bills in the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee earlier this month, a Finance Ministry representative warned 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 replied that it has been working on mapping out all the services provided by UNRWA in the city 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.”
Following the bills’ passage through their first reading on Monday, Jerusalem Affairs Minister Meir Porush announced that his office was working “toward the replacement of UNRWA services in East Jerusalem and the complete cessation of its activities in the city.”
MK Ofer Cassif, the only Jewish member of the Arab-majority Hadash-Ta’al party, argued during the debate ahead of the votes that the bill will “block access to the education system” for many Palestinian children in East Jerusalem.
Tens of thousands of Arab children are already falling between the cracks and “this law would block access to the education system that does operate” in East Jerusalem, he declared from the Knesset rostrum, insisting that Israel must “safeguard the right of Palestinians to educate their children according to their culture and heritage.”
An UNRWA spokesperson declined to comment when contacted by The Times of Israel.
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