UNRWA’s expulsion from Jerusalem will seal Israel’s illegal annexation

In the last week of January, two Knesset bills ending Israel’s “cooperation” with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, (UNRWA), are scheduled to come into force. If they do, UNRWA’s activities in the territory of the state of Israel would be illegal under Israeli law and any Israeli official or institution engaging with the agency would be breaking the law.

In a letter to the president of the General Assembly in October, UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, revealed he’d written to prime minister Netanyahu, urging his government to take the necessary steps to avoid the legislation being implemented. He also expressed concern that these laws would harm UNRWA’s ability to deliver life-saving services in Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

This provoked a detailed response from Israel’s UN Ambassador in New York, Danny Dannon, who responded laying out Israel’s strategic planning pursuant to the Knesset bills. 

UNRWA to be expelled from Jerusalem

Much about Israel’s strategy was already known, for example its plan to eliminate UNRWA in Gaza and deliver services through a combination of other UN agencies, such as the World Food Programme, (WFP), along with the Israeli military and private sector companies.

Mr Dannon made clear that the occupying authorities plan to take over UNRWA facilities in Jerusalem.

According to UNRWA’s website, these include ten schools, three primary health clinics and a training centre. Students would likely be sent to Israeli schools for the Palestinian population of occupied East Jerusalem, whose curricula have been subject to “Judaisistation”, in contravention of Israel’s international humanitarian law obligations to the occupied population.

There is also a major question mark over UNRWA’s massive headquarters in Sheikh Jarrah.

The UNRWA compound, which contains several huge warehouses for humanitarian goods, has been subjected to arson attacks in recent months, which forced it to shut down. And, even before the two bills were passed on 28 October last year, several Knesset members demanded that water and electricity to the facility should be cut off and the agency expelled.

There have even been reports that Israel’s Land Authority will seize the UNRWA headquarters and turn it over to illegal Jewish settlers for 1,440 housing units, in blatant breach of Israel’s international law obligations.

Nonetheless, it seems UNRWA’s Jerusalem HQ may be shut down in the face of Israeli threats, violence and pressure. Staff are being told to relocate to offices in Amman as a result of a performance review and UNRWA says its Jerusalem HQ was only ever temporary.

But a recent communication from UNRWA to its donors makes clear that the agency is ceding to Israeli intimidation: “While the review of HQ functions has been underway for a number of years, the review and decision has been fast-tracked as a result of the administrative and operational challenges experienced by the agency throughout 2024, including visa issuance, visa duration and lack of issuing diplomatic ID cards. These challenges have inhibited our effectiveness to work as a Headquarters in Jerusalem”.

De facto annexation

If UNRWA is expelled from East Jerusalem, this would have potentially devastating impact on over 63,000 Palestinian refugees who depend on its services.

Moreover, it would have profound political significance, particularly for the global Islamic community because it would set the seal on Israel’s illegal annexation of Jerusalem, home to Al Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest shrine in Islam.

It would also be a violation of the ruling last July by the International Court of Justice, (ICJ), demanding that the occupation ends.

The annexation of Jerusalem as the “eternal and undivided capital of the Jewish state” which began with the occupation in 1967, would become another illegal fact on the ground.

Crucially, Jerusalem will have been unilaterally removed from whatever is left of the Middle East Peace Process. 

Arab governments, particularly Saudi Arabia and Jordan, must therefore act now, and decisively, to save their holy city. The loss of Jerusalem will undoubtedly provoke a violent reaction among Palestinians and likely lead to calls for jihad more widely. In the context of an explosive Middle East this can only engender further destabilising tensions for governments in the region.

I therefore call on Saudi Arabia to make the scrapping of the Knesset legislation a precondition in the normalisation negotiations with Israel. The Saudi administration must make this clear to Netanyahu and insist that for Muslims, Jerusalem is sacrosanct, and that the expulsion of UNRWA is a step too far.

The Trump transition team has already been warned of the looming catastrophe in the oPt if Israel is allowed to destroy UNRWA’s operations, and I urge Arab leaders to insist with their Saudi interlocutors that the regional fallout from this feature prominently in the normalisation talks.

Lack of contingency planning

Meanwhile, the senior UN leadership has adopted the position that the responsibility to deliver aid is Israel’s as the occupying power. To the consternation of UNRWA staffers, substantive inter-agency discussions across the humanitarian system about a UN-led day-after plan have effectively been banned.

For Palestinians against whom a genocide is being committed, this feels like abandonment and betrayal - a sense compounded by suspicions that UNRWA international staff may be forced to leave Gaza at a time of mass starvation.

Similar conclusions were reached by Dr Lex Takkenberg, Senior Advisor with Arab Renaissance for Democracy and Development (ARDD), and other researchers who have just completed an as yet unpublished assessment of the implications of Israel’s ban on UNRWA, based on interviews with a large number of UNRWA staff and other experts. Their study confirms that with the lack of contingency planning, the suffering of the Palestinian population, particularly in Gaza, will increase dramatically, as the backbone of the humanitarian operation crumbles without an alternative structure in place.

Contrary to UNRWA, Israel has been doing a great deal of contingency planning with non-UNRWA agencies such as WFP, who are under strong US pressure to take over aid imports from UNRWA. As a result, the amount of aid taken into Gaza by UNRWA has reduced significantly.

In Gaza, only UNRWA has the infrastructure to distribute aid to scale, such as vehicles, warehouses, distribution centres and staff. However, Israeli authorities are making this extremely difficult. They claim to be “deconflicting” aid deliveries, but according to UN sources there is clear evidence that Israeli soldiers are firing on vehicles and allowing criminal gangs to plunder convoys with impunity.

Thus Israeli officials are able to say to journalists whom they have barred from seeing the truth in Gaza, that they are allowing in all the aid Gaza needs, but that UNRWA is unfit for purpose. This lie has gone unchallenged in the international media.

Further implications

According to Takkenberg, “Mr Guterres’s strategy of calling on Israel as the occupying power to deliver aid has backfired and is inflicting untold suffering on the Palestinians. The strategy also feels misplaced, given that Israel is accused of genocide in the UN’s highest court, the International Court of Justice, and is facing expulsion from the UN General Assembly”.  He adds that Israel, “has exploited the UN’s strategy as part of its campaign of starvation and genocide.”  

In the face of this, I call on the Secretary General to mobilise the UN system. He has said repeatedly that UNRWA is the backbone of the UN’s humanitarian strategy, that the agency is indispensable and key to regional stability. It is time for the UNSG to walk the walk. 

He must use his powers under Article 99 of the UN charter, granted precisely for these circumstances, to call the Security Council into emergency session and make his demand that the Knesset legislation must  not be implemented the top agenda item. The General Assembly which gives UNRWA its mandate must also be called into session.

Though Mr Guterres faces huge pressure from Israel’s powerful allies, he must stand up on behalf of a people the UN is mandated to protect and double down on those who are complicit in genocide.

The UN’s policy in Gaza along with acceptance of Jerusalem’s annexation with impunity for Israel, has major implications for its credibility and I confidently predict it will lead to further attacks by Israel on other UN agencies, such as the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, (OCHA), which has long been an irritant to the Tel Aviv administration.

The de facto annexation of Jerusalem will also see an erosion of the international rule of law.

In its advisory opinion in July last year, the ICJ concluded that Israel is not entitled to exercise sovereign powers in any part of the Occupied Palestinian Territory on account of its occupation. In addition, the expulsion of UNRWA would be in violation of the Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations, which obliges Israel as a signatory, to cooperate with UN Agencies such as UNRWA.

The UN’s historic responsibility to the Palestinians

Already, through its attack on UNRWA Israel is attempting unilaterally to remove the Palestinian refugees, their history, their identity and their inalienable right of return from the peace process. As I have argued many times, this will fail. So must Israel’s unilateral attempt to take Jerusalem off the negotiating table by expelling UNRWA and completing its illegal annexation of the city.

That would see the international community and the UN abandoning its historic responsibilities to the Palestinian people and can only lead to further suffering and instability in a chronically unstable Middle East. The Muslim world must act decisively and swiftly. The clock is ticking.

Chris Gunness served as UNRWA’s Director of Communications and Advocacy from 2007 until 2020.

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Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.