JERUSALEM: Israel on Thursday formally banned the main United Nations aid agency for Palestinian refugees from operating on its territory despite heavy diplomatic backlash, a move that humanitarian officials warn could have a disastrous impact on aid delivery and jeopardize regional stability in the long term.
The attempt against the company, known as UNRWA, went into effect at midnight on Thursday, the Jewish foreign government said. But hours later, there was no shift on the ground except in the most aesthetic sense, right-wing activists clambered up the high rock walls of UNRWA’s headquarters element in east Jerusalem, yanked down the blue-and-white UN symbol, hoisting up Israel’s blue-and-white instead.
The tower was mostly empty. Israeli workers, who make up the huge bulk at the office, were encouraged to stay house for their health, while UNRWA’s global personnel, about 50 aid workers, left for Jordan the day before as their visas expired.
UNRWA’s extensive network of hospitals and colleges in east Jerusalem is still operational, and the organization reported that support deliveries to the Gaza Strip have not changed.
2.5 million Israeli migrants are aided by UNRWA in Gaza, the occupied West Bank, and eastern Jerusalem, as well as 3 million more in Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon. Since the Israel-Hamas conflict started in October 2023, it has been the primary source of support for a community that relies heavily on charitable assistance.
Following weeks of criticism of the organization from prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right friends, who claim the organization is greatly infiltrated by Hamas, Israel’s restrictions was approved by parliament last October. UNRWA rejects that state. Contact between Zionist leaders and UNRWA staff is also prohibited by the policy.
In Jerusalem, the immediate effect is dilemma
Palestinians claim that the organization’s work in eastern Jerusalem, which Israel annexed after the 1967 Mideast War, is being put an end to by UNRWA officers and Israeli government, according to UNRWA officials and Israeli regulators.
But on Thursday night, students in the Shuafat migrant camp in eastern Jerusalem, which is located just outside Israel’s material separation barrier from the West Bank, filled their UNRWA classrooms as usual, according to Jihad Abu Zneid, a former Israeli lawmaker who runs a women’s center there.
Authorities told her two days earlier that they would locked down the office after the ban came into effect, but she claimed she was the head nurse at the UNRWA-run health facility in the center of Jerusalem’s Old City, without specifying when.
She arrived on Thursday, she said, anticipating the worst, but she opened the clinic at 7 AM, and neither her staff nor patients were harmed.
” I don’t feel relieved yet because we don’t know what will happen”, she said. The main result of this entire decision is misunderstanding and fear.
She added:” We are open. I’m not leaving”. Women in white coats sat down for breakfast outside the clinic nodded and remarked,” We’re not leaving.”
Upheaval for impoverished families
The sight of nurses chatting and feasting on sesame-sprinkled bread was the reassurance that Amal Julani, 64, needed. She and a dozen other Palestinian patients who rely on the Old City clinic for regular medicine rushed to its pharmacy on Thursday to check if it had gone elsewhere.
” I was crying last night at the thought of it closing”, Julani said outside the clinic. Perhaps all of this was just a political game. God willing, it will continue to be OK”.
Palestinian residents of east Jerusalem worry that dozens of UN-run health centers and schools will become a place of refuge for the homeless who have grown to rely on those services because they have long complained of being neglected by Israeli municipal authorities.
Some Israeli officials have demanded that those institutions be immediately shut down. Other people want the organization to be gradually phased out and its work to be replaced by other groups and municipal schools.
A group of Israeli policemen outside the Old City gates looked relaxed, snacking on peanut-butter corn puffs. They claimed that they have not yet received an order to physically close anything.
Right-wing Israelis revel in a victory
UNRWA was founded in 1949 to care for the more than 700, 000 Palestinians who were expelled from or fled their homes in the war over Israel’s creation. Refugees from the wars of 1948 and 1967 were the last to pass their status as refugees, growing to almost 6 million in the area.
Israel has long resisted allowing their return. The UN agency, according to its political establishment, prevents their integration into their home countries and encourages perpetuation of the theory that they might one day return. Palestinians assert that they do have the right to return under international law, but Israel contends that they do not, and that a widespread return would undermine the state’s Jewish identity.
After the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, which triggered Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, Israeli officials accused around a dozen of UNRWA’s 13, 000 staff in Gaza of participating in the assault. 18 governments froze funding the organization in response, but the majority have since restored it.
Israel had not provided any proof in an independent review commissioned by the UN to back up its claims that many UNRWA staff members belong to Hamas or other militant groups.
On Thursday, several Israeli settlers, who have staged protests calling for the closure of UNRWA for months, gathered outside its east Jerusalem headquarters to celebrate the closure. A Star of David-style spray of a dark blue by one activist was applied over the entrance sign.
Arieh King, a deputy mayor of Jerusalem, popped a champagne cork, took a swig from the bottle and passed it around, pronouncing it a “happy and special and historic day”.
He claimed that it was time for the Arabs who UNRWA was helping to integrate into Jerusalem’s population.
The UN fears further ramifications
UN officials have expressed concern about how the sprawling compound’s closure, which houses aid convoys and large storage units, as well as the freeze on its cooperation with Israel, will obstruct the delivery of desperately needed food and assistance to 2 million Palestinians in Gaza.
Officials from UNRWA warn that the closure is timely because it is responsible for the agency’s ongoing flow of humanitarian aid into the strip as part of an Israeli-Hamas ceasefire.
Palestinians see Israel’s efforts to remove UNRWA’s “right of return” as one of the conflict’s most emotive issues and a key sticking point in peace negotiations as a means of achieving a permanent resolution to the decades-old conflict.
” For me, for my descendants, the departure of the agency would mean the death of the Palestinian cause”, said Ismail al-Turk, a retired UNRWA teacher in east Jerusalem.
What does it mean for multilateralism that a UN member state has just banned a UN agency raises questions.
” It creates an appalling precedent”, said Jonathan Fowler, UNRWA’s senior communications manager. ” The international order is far from perfect, but it’s what we’ve got. The risks go far beyond this region if you start unraveling it.
