On October 6, 2024, Israel’s parliament advanced two billssupported by 100 members of parliament, to stop the activities of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) in the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt).

First bill aims to prohibits UNRWA to operate on Israeli territory. Israel considers East Jerusalem to be sovereign territory, despite occupying it in 1967 in violation of international law and later annexing it.

The second bill ends Israel’s participation in 1967 The Comay-Michelmore Agreementwhich stipulates that Israel must allow the facilitation of UNRWA’s work in the occupied areas.

As legislation has progressed, initial reports claimed that the Israeli Land Authority (ILA) seized the UNRWA headquarters in occupied East Jerusalem and turned the compound into a 1,440-unit housing complex.

According to UNRWA officials, ILA sent an evacuation order to the humanitarian agency in June this year – alleging that the UNRWA office was illegally occupying state land – but UNRWA has received no further notifications since then.

“UNRWA has never officially received any notification of the seizure orders from the Israeli authorities,” said Juliette Touma, UNRWA’s director of communications. The new Arab.

However, ILA has published its housing plan for the UNRWA compound on its website October 10, 2024indicating that the project is already in the preparation stages. ILA did not respond TNA requests regarding its plans for the UNRWA site.

Israel claims that UNRWA’s headquarters is on state property, but UNRWA denies these allegations, saying the land was leased to them by Jordan in 1952. The agency pays Jordan a symbolic annual rental fee of 2,500 Jordanian dinars (about 2,700 pounds sterling). is deposited into an escrow account.

“Our lease agreement with Jordan was not invalidated by the Israeli authorities after 1967,” said Jonathan Fowler, senior communications manager at UNRWA. TNA. “We have exclusive rights to the complex in Sheikh Jarrah and we also have exclusive rights to the Qalandia Training Center.”

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

A long-running campaign against UNRWA

Israel has long sought dismantling UNRWA operationsaccusing it of anti-Semitism and inciting terror in its schools. These efforts never materialized, but gained renewed momentum following the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, when Israel accused 12 UNRWA staff members participated in the attack (without providing evidence of these claims).

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

UNRWA’s actions did little to appease anti-UNRWA activists and politicians in Israel, who then latched onto the narrative that the UN agency is 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 echelon, with many officials across the political spectrum supporting the current proposed bills. Both 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, have they reiterated their support for banning UNRWA despite growing calls from US and European diplomats to prevent the legislation from becoming law.

However, other government ministers expressed hesitation after Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Israel warned that passing the laws would violate the UN Charter and risk Israel’s expulsion from the world body.

“As a member state of the UN, Israel is obliged to support and respect the privileges and immunities of all UN bodies. These include UNRWA … which cannot be eliminated by the actions of one or a group of countries, but would require the collective decision of the UN General Assembly itself,” said Susan Akram, law professor and director of the International Rights Clinic Boston University Man. The new Arab.

Akram also noted that Israel is a party to the 1946 UN Convention on Privileges and Immunities, which guarantees that “UN property and assets, wherever they are and whoever owns them, enjoy immunity from all forms of legal process.” and “the premises of the UN will be inviolable”.

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

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

“Israel’s attempts to dismantle UNRWA can and should only be understood within the context of its broader war of annihilation of the Palestinians,” said Shatha Abdulsamad, an analyst at the Palestinian policy network, Al-Shabaka. TNA.

“By dismantling UNRWA, Israel is trying to liquidate the Palestinian refugee problem and end, once and for all, the Palestinian right of return.”

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

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

“Israel claims that its attacks on UNRWA are about UNRWA’s neutrality, but it really isn’t. It’s about their humanitarian work and protecting the status of Palestinian refugees.”

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

“Refugee camps in the Middle East will remain and there would be a bigger issue about who will operate 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