What's behind Israel's long-running campaign to dismantle UNRWA?

On 6 October 2024, Israel’s parliament advanced two bills, backed by 100 parliamentary members, 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).

The first bill aims to ban UNRWA from operating within Israeli territory. Israel considers East Jerusalem as its sovereign territory, despite occupying it in 1967 in violation of international law and later annexing it.

The second bill ends Israel’s participation in the 1967 Comay-Michelmore agreement, which mandates that Israel must allow for the facilitation of UNRWA’s work in the oPt.

As the legislation pushed forward, initial reports claimed the Israel Land Authority (ILA) was seizing UNRWA’s headquarters in occupied East Jerusalem and transforming the compound into a housing complex consisting of 1,440 units.

According to UNRWA officials, the ILA sent an evacuation order to the humanitarian agency in June of this year - claiming UNRWA’s office was illegally occupying state land - but UNRWA hasn’t received any other notices since.

“UNRWA has never received officially any notification about the confiscation orders from the Israeli authorities,” Juliette Touma, UNRWA director of communications, told The New Arab.

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

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

“Our lease agreement with Jordan hasn't been invalidated by the Israeli authorities after 1967,” Jonathan Fowler, senior communications manager at UNRWA, told TNA. “We have exclusive rights to the compound in Sheikh Jarrah, and we also have exclusive rights to the Qalandia Training Centre.”

UNRWA’s headquarters are located in the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah and it also operates a vocational school in the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Kafr Aqab.

A long-standing campaign against UNRWA

Israel has long sought to dismantle UNRWA operations, accusing it of antisemitism and inciting terror in its schools. These efforts never materialised but gained renewed momentum following Hamas’ 7 October 2023 attack on Israel, when Israel accused 12 UNRWA staff members of participating in the assault (without providing evidence of these claims).

UNRWA, for its part, launched two probes into its agency, with one finding nine employees “may have been involved” in the attack, and subsequently terminating the suspected staff.

UNRWA’s actions did little to appease anti-UNRWA activists and politicians within Israel, which then latched onto the narrative claiming the UN agency is a terrorist organisation and using this rhetoric to push for legislation abolishing UNRWA.

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

Yet other government ministers have expressed hesitation after Israel’s Foreign Ministry warned the laws’ passage would violate the UN charter and risk Israel’s expulsion from the world body.

“As a UN member state, 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 any one or group of countries but would require the collective decision of the UN General Assembly itself,” Susan Akram, law professor and director of the International Human Rights Clinic at Boston University, told The New Arab.

Akram also noted Israel is a party to the Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the UN of 1946, which guarantees UN "property and assets wherever located and by whomsoever held, shall enjoy immunity from every form of legal process" and "the premises of the UN shall be inviolable".

“It prohibits member states from searching, confiscating, expropriating, or in any other way interfering with the property and assets of the UN,” Akram explained.

UNRWA’s establishment in December 1949 was based upon UN General Assembly Resolution 194, enshrining Palestinian refugees’ right of 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 motive behind Israel’s long-standing campaign to eliminate UNRWA.

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

“By dismantling UNRWA, Israel seeks to liquidate the Palestinian refugee question and put an end, once and for all, for the Palestinian right of return.”

Yet even if UNRWA ceases to exist - as Israel hopes - that doesn’t mean Palestinian refugees and their calls to return evaporate as well.

“Even if UNRWA closes down, the issue of Palestinian refugees will remain,” Milena Ansari, Israel and Palestine researcher at Human Rights Watch told TNA.

“Israel claims its attacks on UNRWA are about UNRWA’s neutrality, but it genuinely is not. It's about their humanitarian work and protection of the status of Palestinian refugees.”

As Israel continues striking Gaza and now Lebanon, home to the third-largest population of Palestinian refugees, shutting down UNRWA could inevitably lead to a humanitarian catastrophe.

“Refugee camps across 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