‘No legal barrier to banning UNRWA’: Knesset due to blacklist agency

The international community has been pressing Israel not to blacklist UNRWA, claiming there is no alternative in Gaza providing assistance to the local population.

By Anna Epshtein, TPS

The Israeli Knesset is due to vote on Monday night on a pair of bills banning the controversial United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) from operating in Israel and Gaza.

The bills, offered for final vote, would strip UNRWA of its diplomatic immunity and tax-exempt privileges, ban Israeli officials from having any contact with agency staffers and revoke the 1967 exchange of notes between Israel and UNRWA which provided the legal basis for the agency’s activities.

UNRWA has been under fire for months, with Israeli officials demanding the agency be stripped of its authority in Gaza and defunded amid revelations that members of the agency’s staff participated in Hamas’s October 7 attacks.

“There is no legal barrier for banning UNRWA from operating in Israel and in the Gaza Strip,” Yifa Segal, an expert in international law and the founder of the International Legal Forum NGO, told The Press Service of Israel.

“The exchange of notes between Israel and UNRWA from 1967 explicitly states that Israel voluntarily agreed to help UNRWA to operate from its territory, and that ‘a provisional agreement between UNRWA and the Government of Israel is to remain in force until replaced or canceled.’” Segal said. “The time has come to cancel it.”

Palestinian refugees are the only refugee population with its own dedicated UN agency. The rest of the world’s refugees fall under the mandate of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

The international community has been pressing Israel not to blacklist UNRWA, claiming there is no alternative in Gaza providing assistance to the local population.

“But we see that the alternative is emerging – there are numerous aid organizations in Gaza that provide assistance and do not host terror at the same time,” Segal said.

“I think when the world sees that there is an alternative, and providing that Israeli stance on the matter will be firm, it will be only the matter of time that UNRWA will stop getting financing from the European governments.”

In July, Israel gave the UN the names of around 100 UNRWA personnel who participated in the attack, held hostages, or were members of Hamas.

However, the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services, which investigates mismanagement, fraud, corruption, and other misconduct, only probed 19 personnel.

The OIOS did not indicate why it did not investigate the dozens of other workers.

Of the 19 staffers who were investigated, the OIOS said nine “may have been involved in the armed attacks” and that “the employment of these individuals will be terminated in the interests of the Agency.”

On October 24, a Hamas commander who led the assault on a bomb shelter near Kibbutz Re’im and was also a UNRWA employee was killed in an Israeli airstrike.

An agency spokesperson confirmed that the commander’s name was included in an Israeli letter in July which identified other Hamas figures on the staff.

More than 100 survivors of Hamas’s October 7 attacks filed a $1 billion lawsuit against UNRWA in June, accusing the agency of “aiding and abetting” the terror group.

According to the suit, the lead plaintiff, 84-year-old Ditza Heiman of Kibbutz Nir Oz, was held captive for seven weeks in the home of a Palestinian man who said he was a UNRWA teacher at a boy’s school.

Israel’s largest bank froze UNRWA’s account in February over suspicious financial transfers that the agency failed to adequately explain.

That same month, Israeli forces discovered a Hamas complex located directly under the UNRWA’s Gaza City headquarters and connected directly to the agency’s electricity system.

The facility included numerous computer servers belonging to the terror group.

UNRWA was also ordered to vacate its Jerusalem offices in May over lease violations.

At least 1,200 people were killed, and 252 Israelis and foreigners were taken hostage in Hamas’s attacks on Israeli communities near the Gaza border on October 7. Of the 97 remaining hostages, more than 30 have been declared dead. Hamas has also been holding captive two Israeli civilians since 2014 and 2015, and the bodies of two soldiers killed in 2014.

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