Israel Passes Law To Ban UN Relief Agency From Operating Inside Country

Israel's parliament on Monday approved a bill banning the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) from working in Israel and occupied east Jerusalem, despite objections from the United States.

Lawmakers passed the bill with 92 votes in favour and 10 against, after years of harsh Israeli criticism of UNRWA, which has only increased since the start of the war in Gaza following Hamas's deadly October 7 attacks last year.

The ban on the UN agency -- which has provided essential aid and assistance across Palestinian territories and to Palestinian refugees elsewhere for more than seven decades -- would be a blow to humanitarian work in Gaza if implemented, according to experts.

UNRWA spokeswoman Juliette Touma condemned the vote.

"It's outrageous that a member state of the United Nations is working to dismantle a UN agency which also happens to be the largest responder in the humanitarian operation in Gaza," she told AFP.

"If it's implemented it's a disaster including due to the impact this is likely to have on the humanitarian operation in Gaza and in several parts of the West Bank," she said, adding that the agency is the lead provider of "shelter, food and primary health care" in war-battered Gaza.

Ahead of the vote, the United States said it was "deeply concerned" about the bill, reiterating the "critical" role the agency plays in distributing humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip.

Washington warned Israel on October 15 that it had 30 days to increase the amount of aid reaching the Gaza Strip or it would consider withholding some military assistance.

Also earlier Monday, Britain's Foreign Secretary David Lammy expressed "profound regret" that Israel was "considering shutting down UNRWA's operations".

In January, Israel accused a dozen of UNRWA's Gaza employees of involvement in the October 7 attack by Hamas, which sparked the deadliest war in the territory.

A series of probes found some "neutrality related issues" at UNRWA, and determined that nine employees "may have been involved" in the October 7 attack, but found no evidence for Israel's chief allegations.

"There is a deep connection between the terrorist organization (Hamas) and UNRWA and Israel cannot put up with it," Yuli Edelstein, a Likud party lawmaker and one of the sponsors of the bill, said in parliament as he presented the proposal.

"There is no place for enemies in the heart of the capital of the Jewish people."

Israel claims the whole of Jerusalem, including the annexed east, as its indivisible capital.

- 'Grave concern' over ban -

The ban would effectively prevent UNRWA from operating in Israel and also target its operations in east Jerusalem, where it currently provides some essential services such as cleaning, education, and healthcare in certain neighbourhoods.

"There is a big gap between how UNRWA is viewed by some in the international community and how people in Israel see the agency," Boaz Bismuth, an Israeli lawmaker who co-sponsored the legislation, told AFP.  

UNRWA and other humanitarian agencies have accused Israeli authorities of restricting aid flows into Gaza, where almost all of the territory's 2.4 million people have been displaced at least once in the war.

The agency itself has suffered heavy losses, with at least 223 of its staff killed and two-thirds of the agency's facilities in Gaza damaged or destroyed since the war began.

The war in Gaza erupted with Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed at least 43,020 people in Gaza, a majority of them civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory's health ministry, figures which the UN considers reliable.

Over the weekend, a statement by foreign ministers from several Western countries slammed the proposed legislation targeting the UN agency.

"We, the Foreign Ministers of Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Japan, Republic of Korea and the United Kingdom, express our grave concern over legislation currently under consideration by the Israeli Knesset, aimed at revoking the privileges and immunities of [UNRWA]," read the statement.  

UNRWA was created in 1949 to support Palestinian refugees in the Middle East.

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