Knesset passes legislation banning UNRWA
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the opening of the
Lawmakers voted 92 to 10 for the bill that revokes the 1967 exchange of notes between Israel and UNRWA providing the basis for the agency’s activities, and 87-9 for the bill that bans state authorities from having any contact with UNRWA. UNRWA workers needed permits from Israel to get to the Gaza Strip.
UNRWA has faced scrutiny not only for its alleged role in the October 7 attacks, but also for ongoing accusations of facilitating Hamas operations within its facilities. For instance, Israeli forces discovered a Hamas complex beneath UNRWA’s Gaza City headquarters earlier this year.
More than 100 survivors of the October 7 attacks have filed a $1 billion lawsuit against UNRWA, alleging the agency “aided and abetted” Hamas.
Israeli officials are advocating for a restructuring of refugee aid, calling for Palestinian refugees to fall under the mandate of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, as they assert that the current setup is unsustainable and detrimental to Israeli security.
Australia’s Foreign Minister Penny Wong posted on social media: “UNRWA does life-saving work. Australia opposes the Israeli Knesset’s decision to severely restrict UNRWA’s work,” Senator Wong said on social media.
“Australia again calls on Israel to comply with the binding orders of the International Court of Justice to enable the provision of basic services and humanitarian assistance at scale in Gaza.”
The comments come after Australia issued a joint statement on Sunday, alongside foreign ministers of Canada, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea and the UK, which urged Israel not to go through with the UNRWA ban.
“Without its work, the provision of such assistance and services, including education, health care, and fuel distribution in Gaza and the West Bank would be severely hampered if not impossible,” the joint statement said.
“It is crucial that UNRWA and other UN organisations and agencies be fully able to deliver humanitarian aid and their assistance to those who need it most, fulfilling their mandates effectively.”
AIJAC executive director Dr Colin Rubenstein told J-Wire: “The Israeli decision to ban UNRWA was an inevitable consequence of the international community’s failure to respond to decades of warnings, backed with overwhelming evidence, that this UN agency was facilitating and inciting terrorism, and had also become a significant barrier to any hopes of an Israeli-Palestinian two-state peace.
For many years, there have been reports that UNRWA was using international donor money to cooperate with Hamas, employ supporters and members of terrorist organisations, incite violence, and educate Palestinians towards hatred and intolerance rather than a future of peaceful coexistence. In the last year, it has been proven that numerous UNRWA employees participated in the October 7 massacre, that perhaps half of its employees in Gaza are either members of a terror group or have family members who are, and that a major Hamas IT and intelligence bunker was located directly under UNRWA’s main Gaza headquarters in such a way that UNRWA employees working there must have been aware of it. Yet there have still been no serious efforts at reform of the agency.
Is it any wonder that Israelis have lost patience, and decided to counter the direct terrorist threat to them posed by UNRWA? There is a reason the Israeli legislation targeting UNRWA also gained support from almost all the left-leaning Israeli opposition parties, as well as the current right-leaning government.
Of course, aid must continue to flow freely to Palestinians in Gaza and elsewhere, as the Israeli Government acknowledged and emphasised in the wake of the vote to ban UNRWA. It has been amply demonstrated over recent months that other aid agencies, such as the World Food Program, are at least as capable of managing that aid as UNRWA, and the Israeli legislation has a three-month delay built into it to allow an effective transition to other agencies.”
