What is behind Israel’s long campaign to dismantle UNRWA?

October 6, 2024 Israeli Parliament put forward two billswith the support of 100 members of parliament, stop the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. (UNRWA) in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT).

First bill strives ban UNRWA from activities in Israel. Israel considers East Jerusalem its sovereign territory, even though it occupied it in 1967 in violation of international law and later annexed it.

The second bill ends Israeli participation in 1967. Comet-Michelmore Agreementwhich directs Israel to allow assistance to the work of UNRWA in the OPT.

As legislation progresses, initial reports said the Israel Land Authority (ILA) had seized the UNRWA headquarters in occupied East Jerusalem and turned it into a residential complex consisting of 1,440 apartments.

According to UNRWA representatives, ALP sent an evacuation order to the humanitarian agency in June this year, alleging that the UNRWA office was illegally occupying government land, but UNRWA has not received any other notifications since then.

“UNRWA has never officially received any notification of confiscation orders from Israeli authorities,” said Juliet Tuma, UNRWA communications director. New Arab.

However, ILA published its housing plan for the UNRWA compound on its website. October 10, 2024which indicates that the project is already in the preparation stage. ILA did not respond to TNA inquiries regarding its plans for the UNRWA site.

Israel claims that UNRWA’s headquarters is on government land, but UNRWA denies these accusations, saying the site was leased to it by Jordan in 1952. The agency pays Jordan a symbolic annual rent of 2,500 Jordanian dinars (approximately £2,700), which is deposited into an escrow account.

“Our lease agreement with Jordan was not invalidated by Israeli authorities after 1967,” said Jonathan Fowler, UNRWA senior communications manager. TNA. “We have exclusive rights to the Sheikh Jarrah complex as well as the Qalandiya training center.”

UNRWA headquarters is located in the East Jerusalem area. Sheikh Jarrah and also operates a vocational school in the Kafr Aqab neighborhood of East Jerusalem.

Long-running campaign against UNRWA

Israel has long sought wind down UNRWA operationsaccusing him of anti-Semitism and inciting terror in schools. These efforts never materialized, but received new impetus following the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, when Israel accused 12 UNRWA employees about participation in the attack (without providing evidence of these allegations).

UNRWA, for its part, launched two investigations into its agency, one of which found that nine staff members “may have been involved” in the attack, and subsequently fired the suspected staff members.

UNRWA’s actions did little to appease anti-UNRWA activists and politicians in Israel, who then seized on the narrative that the UN agency was a terrorist organization and used that rhetoric to push for legislation to abolish UNRWA.

Anti-UNRWA sentiment has reached the highest levels of Israel’s political echelons, with many officials across the political spectrum supporting the now proposed bills. And the leader of the government opposition, and the chairman of the centrist Yesh Atid party, Yair Lapid, and the chairman of the conservative Yisrael Beiteinu party, Avigdor Lieberman reiterated their support for banning UNRWA, despite growing demands from US and European diplomats to prevent the legislation from becoming law.

However, other government ministers expressed hesitation after Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs warned that the adoption of the laws would violate the UN charter and entail the exclusion of Israel from this world organization.

“As a member state of the UN, Israel has an obligation to uphold and respect the privileges and immunities of all organs of the UN. These include UNRWA… which cannot be eliminated by the actions of any one or group of countries, but will require a collective decision by the UN General Assembly itself,” said Susan Akram, a law professor and director of the International Human Rights Clinic at Boston University. New Arab.

Akram also noted that Israel is a party to the 1946 Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations, which guarantees that “property and assets of the United Nations, wherever located and by whomever held, enjoy immunity from any form of legal process” and “premises The UN is inviolable.”

“It prohibits member states from searching, confiscating, expropriating or otherwise interfering with UN property and assets,” Akram explained.

The creation of UNRWA in December 1949 was based on UN General Assembly Resolution 194, which established the right of Palestinian refugees to return following their expulsion by Zionist and Israeli forces in 1947-1948, when the State of Israel was founded. This, analysts say, is the driving force behind Israel’s long-running campaign to eliminate UNRWA.

“Israel’s attempts to eliminate UNRWA can and should only be understood within the framework of its broader war to destroy the Palestinians,” said Shata Abdulsamad, an analyst with the Palestinian political network al-Shabaka. TNA.

“By eliminating UNRWA, Israel seeks to eliminate the Palestinian refugee problem and end the Palestinian right of return once and for all.”

However, even if UNRWA ceases to exist – as Israel hopes – this does not mean that Palestinian refugees and their calls to return will also disappear.

“Even if UNRWA closes, the Palestinian refugee problem will remain,” said Milena Ansari, Israel-Palestine researcher at Human Rights Watch. TNA.

“Israel claims that its attacks on UNRWA are due to its neutrality, but in fact this is not the case. This is about their humanitarian work and protecting the status of Palestinian refugees.”

As Israel continues to strike Gaza and now Lebanon, where third largest population Palestinian refugees, the closure of UNRWA could inevitably lead to a humanitarian catastrophe.

“Refugee camps in the Middle East will remain, and there will be a larger question of who will manage these refugee camps and who will provide humanitarian assistance,” Ansari said.

Jessica Buxbaum is a Jerusalem-based journalist covering Palestine and Israel. Her work has been featured in Middle East Eye, The National and Gulf News.

Follow her on Twitter: @jess_buxbaum