Israel’s parliament has voted to ban a nearly eight-decade-old United Nations agency that provides essential services to Palestinian refugees, a move that could have devastating consequences for millions of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation.

On Monday, the Knesset passed two bills; one banning UNRWA from working in Israel and another banning Israeli authorities from any contact with UNRWA – revoking the 1967 treaty that allows UNRWA to provide services to Palestinian refugees in areas under Israeli control.

The move is expected to severely restrict the UN Palestine Refugee Agency (UNRWA) from operating in the Israeli-occupied territories.

After the first law was passed, Likud member Boaz Bismuth, the bill’s architect, said: “Anyone who acts like a terrorist has no rights in Israel… UNRWA is equal to Hamas, period.”

The move continued despite fierce opposition from Arab members of the Knesset and strong international pressure from Western nations. The first law was approved with 92 votes for, 10 against. The second was approved by 87 votes to 9.

The vote was quickly criticized by UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini, who said it violated international law and was “the latest in an ongoing campaign to discredit UNRWA and delegitimize its role in providing assistance and human development services refugees from Palestine”.

Several countries, including the United States, have expressed deep concern about the controversial ban, which could impact the education, food, health care and livelihoods of millions of Palestinians who depend on the agency.

Ahead of the vote, the US State Department urged Israel not to adopt the legislation, saying the agency was playing “an irreplaceable role right now in Gaza.” Secretary of State Antony Blinken previously warned Israel that passing the legislation could “have implications for US law and policy”.

Despite these widely expressed concerns, during the passage of the laws, Knesset member Yuli Edelstein said the move “will not in any way harm humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip” and insisted that Israel was acting within international law.

Israel has long sought to dismantle the UN body, arguing that some of its staff are affiliated with Hamas and that its schools teach hatred against Israel. UNRWA has has repeatedly denied these allegationssaying that “there is absolutely no reason for a blanket description of the ‘institution as a whole’ to be ‘totally infiltrated’.”

Here’s what we know about UNRWA and the implications of the Israeli ban.

What is UNRWA and what does it do?

UNRWA was founded by the United Nations a year after the creation of Israel in 1948, which displaced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes in an event known to Palestinians as the “Nakba” (catastrophe).

The agency, which began by helping some 750,000 Palestinian refugees in 1950, now serves approximately 5.9 million in the Middle East, many of them live in refugee camps in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, as well as in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria.

In the Gaza Strip, which has been ravaged by a devastating Israeli war for more than a year, UNRWA serves about 1.7 million Palestinian refugees. In the West Bank and East Jerusalem, assist around 871,500 refugees.

The agency provides a wide range of aid and services to Palestinian refugees and their descendants, including shelter, healthcare, food and education. It is also a major source of employment for refugees, who make up most of it 30,000 employees in the Middle East, and has offices in New York, Geneva and Brussels.

More than 13,000 of its employees they are stationed only in Gaza. In the West Bank and East Jerusalem, it has almost employees 4,000 workers.

UNRWA is unique in that it is the only UN agency dedicated to a specific group of refugees in specific areas. Although its purpose is to support Palestinian refugees, UNRWA does not have a mandate to resettle them

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is the body in charge of refugee resettlement, but its mandate does not extend to areas where UNRWA operates.

Why does Israel want to ban UNRWA?

Israel has long opposed the agency and tried to dismantle it even before October 7 last year, when Hamas-led militants killed 1,200 people in Israel and took more than 250 hostages. Israeli officials have rejected UNRWA’s definition that Palestinians are eligible for refugee status, arguing that descendants of 1948 refugees do not qualify and therefore have no right to return to their ancestral homes in what is now Israel.

A member of the Israeli parliament The bill behind the bills accused UNRWA on Sunday of “educating children to hate Israel and spreading anti-Semitism.”

“UNRWA… is selling (Palestinians) stories that they will be able to return to Israel. This will not happen,” Yulia Malinovsky, a lawmaker from the Israel Beitenu party, told CNN on Sunday.

But since the war began, Israel has launched an intense campaign to delegitimize the UN body, including impeaching some of the UNRWA staff of association with the Hamas attack, claiming to have participated in various capacities.

UNRWA strongly denied the allegations, but several governments, including the US, suspended funding to the agency earlier this year while the allegations were investigated. In January, the agency terminated the contracts of Israel’s appointees and launched an investigation into his claims. Most nations have since restored funding, with the exception of the US, its largest donor.

UNRWA said that as of October 20 this year, 233 of his workers were killed. And last month, the agency said that year UNRWA staff “were shot and killed on the roof of his house by a sniper during an overnight Israeli military operation” in El Far’a camp in the occupied West Bank, marking the first time a member of the UN agency has been killed in the West Bank in over 10 years. years, UNRWA said.

What would be the impact of banning UNRWA?

UN Secretary General António Guterres he said earlier this month that “in the midst of all the upheavals, UNRWA – more than ever – is indispensable… it is irreplaceable”.

The UN chief said he had sent a letter to Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu, telling him the bill would “stifle efforts to alleviate human suffering and tensions in Gaza and indeed the entire Occupied Palestinian Territory.”

“It would be a catastrophe,” Guterres said, “in what is already an unmitigated disaster.”

But his calls seem to have fallen on deaf ears. The UN chief has been declared persona non grata, or persona non grata, by Israel, whose officials have repeatedly accused Guterres of sympathizing with Israel’s opponents.

UNRWA is the main humanitarian aid group in Gaza. Nearly 2 million Gazans rely on the agency for aid, and 1 million people use UNRWA shelters for food and medical assistance in the enclave. The agency has provided Gazans with everything from food and medical assistance to education and psychological support for decades.

Together with the Palestinian Red Crescent, UNRWA handles almost all the distribution of UN aid coming into the territory. The agency has 11 food distribution centers for 1 million people in Gaza, of which more than half UNRWA values ​​living below the abject poverty line at $1.74 per person per day.

The agency also helped implement an emergency polio vaccination campaign in Gaza, alongside other UN bodies, in an attempt to stop the spread of the infectious virus that can cause paralysis. Last week, the third phase of the polio vaccination campaign in Gaza has been postponed due to escalating violence in northern Gaza, the World Health Organization (WHO) said.

In the West Bank, UNRWA provides services to 19 refugee camps, over 90 schools and a range of health services, including prenatal care. It distributes basic food, loans as well as emergencies cash grants and shelteraccording to the agency’s website.

It is unclear who would undertake assistance for the millions of Palestinian refugees who rely on UNRWA if they were unable. Israel previously tried to dismantle the agency and called for its responsibilities to be merged with UNHCR.

The US State Department told CNN that the ban would make it impossible for UNRWA to operate and leave a “vacuum which Israel would then be responsible for filling.”

Aida Touma-Suleiman, an Israeli-Arab politician and member of the Arab-majority Hadash party, said “the bills stem from a long-standing ambition of the Israeli right – to withdraw Palestinian refugees from their status.”

“Israel is actually creating new refugees every day, calling into question the very legitimacy of this status,” Touma-Suleiman said on X.

What does the international community say?

On Monday, the foreign ministers from seven countries – Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea and the United Kingdom – called on Israel to halt the legislation, expressing “serious concern” about its implications.

“UNRWA provides essential and life-saving humanitarian aid and basic services to Palestinian refugees in Gaza, East Jerusalem, the West Bank and throughout the region,” the foreign ministers said in a joint statement.

Despite the suspension of funding to UNRWA, the US also opposed the ban. In a letter sent to two senior members of the Israeli government earlier this month, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the Biden administration was “deeply concerned” about it.

CNN’s Irene Nasser, Dana Karni, Tim Lister, Kara Fox and Vasco Cotovio contributed to this report.

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