Expelling UNRWA punishes Palestinians. But it’s also dangerous for Israel – and the hostages

Trucks carrying UNRWA humanitarian aids line up to cross the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip on 19 January 2025

Chris Gunness writes in Haaretz on 20 January 2025:

At last, there is a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas – and vital to its success is humanitarian aid. One of the biggest obstacles to the first phase of the truce lasting for its full 42 days and then moving to its second stage is the hundreds of thousands of sick, starving, thirsty, traumatized, homeless Gazans. Desperate, deprived, devastated populations are not good partners for peace.

The only way to address this is to flood Gaza with humanitarian aid. All the crossings must be opened 24/7, for the entry of food, water, medicines, personal hygiene products: the full range of humanitarian aid and equipment.

Shelters are the next most urgent priority. Ninety percent of the housing stock in Gaza is destroyed or damaged. People will be returning to craters and bombed out shelters where their homes once stood. Recovery materials and equipment on an industrial scale will be vital, to avoid the mass outbreak of communicable disease.

As world leaders, and reasonable voices in Israel have said repeatedly, only UNRWA has the infrastructure to distribute aid at the necessary scale. It isn’t often reported in Israel, but two thirds of the 4,000 plus trucks outside Gaza queuing to enter belong to UNRWA.

Throughout the war, 7,000 UNRWA staff provided 16,000 health consultations daily, constituting two thirds of all primary health care in Gaza. UNRWA also provided water and sanitation services, food to nearly two million people, psycho-social support to three quarters of a million Gazans: all this as two-thousand pound bombs rained down, killing 266 UNRWA staff as of January 9. What Israeli humanitarian organization would have the courage and commitment to remain in place in the face of such slaughter?

Today, only UNRWA, with its huge fleet of vehicles, warehouses, distribution centers and staff has the footprint to slow the spread of mass starvation. As for reconstruction and supporting the clearance of the vast amount of unexploded ordinance under an estimated fifty million tons of rubble, UNRWA’s substantial engineering department will be essential.

When we talk of UNRWA’s life-saving services, this is not just rhetoric. It is real. And it is real in a way which could have genuine consequences for the success of the cease-fire plan and the long-awaited return of all of the hostages from Gaza.

In less than two weeks, the two Knesset bills ending Israel’s “cooperation” with UNRWA are scheduled to come into force. If they do, UNRWA’s activities in the territories controlled and occupied by Israel will be illegal under the new legislation and any Israeli official or institution engaging with UNRWA would be acting in violation of the law.

Haaretz recently reported a potent warning by UNRWA’s West Bank director, Roland Friedrich, about the impending legislation’s potentially devastating effects on Palestinians and regional stability. “In Gaza and the West Bank, we provide education to 370,000 children, incorporating tolerance into our programs,” he said. “If this collapses, the risk of radicalization will rise.”

Though it is unclear exactly how the two bills will stifle UNRWA operations in the West Bank and Gaza, in a letter to the UN General Assembly, Israel’s UN Ambassador laid out the Netanyahu government’s plans for occupied East Jerusalem. He said Israel had decided “to ensure the delivery of those services that were hitherto provided by UNRWA in Jerusalem, including in the fields of health and education.”

The unavoidable conclusion is that the Israeli authorities plan to take over the ten UNRWA schools, a vocational training center and the three UNRWA health centers in East Jerusalem, which serve some 63,500 registered refugees. Students from these schools would likely be sent to Israeli schools for the Palestinian population of occupied East Jerusalem, whose curricula are subject to comprehensive interference by the Israeli authorities, centering the Israeli narrative and suppressing or omitting entirely Palestinian history and symbols. Imagine Israeli children being told by the Palestinian Authority what books to study. There would be outrage, probably violent.

There is also a major question mark over UNRWA’s massive headquarters in the Sheikh Jarrah district of Jerusalem where the Commissioner General and his key staff have offices and which is also the headquarters of the Agency’s West Bank operation.

The UNRWA compound, which contains several huge warehouses for humanitarian goods, has been subjected to arson attacks in recent months. And even before the two bills were passed, several Knesset members demanded that water and electricity to the facility be cut off and the agency expelled. There have even been reports that Israel’s Land Authority will seize the UNRWA headquarters and give it to internationally-condemned Jewish settlers for 1,440 housing units, all in blatant violation of Israel’s obligations under international law.

UNRWA’s expulsion from occupied East Jerusalem would have potentially devastating impact on more than 60,000 Palestinian refugees who depend on these facilities, but it would wreak profound political damage.

The de facto annexation of East Jerusalem to West Jerusalem as the “eternal and undivided capital of the Jewish state,” which began with the Israeli occupation in 1967, would become another fact on the ground. Jerusalem, it seems, will have been unilaterally removed from whatever is left of the Middle East Peace Process and the cause of peace will have been irrevocably damaged. It is doubtful whether Arab governments will accept this, particularly Saudi Arabia, which has made a functioning Palestinian state a sine qua non in talks about the normalization of relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors.

Such a move is likely to feed the burgeoning international resentment against Israel and furthering the campaign to have Israel expelled from the UN, as was apartheid South Africa.

Equally significantly, this acceleration of the de facto annexation of East Jerusalem is likely to provoke a violent reaction among Palestinians, as Israeli actions in Jerusalem have done many times in the past and could lead to calls for jihad more widely on the Arab street. In the context of an explosive Middle East, this could result in even more “battlefronts” facing Israel.

In its advisory opinion in July last year declaring the Israeli occupation illegal, the International Court of Justice said Israel was not entitled to exercise sovereign powers in any part of the Occupied Palestinian Territory. In addition, the forced expulsion of UNRWA from occupied Jerusalem would be a violation of the Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations, which obliges Israel, to cooperate with UN agencies such as UNRWA. And Israel’s expulsion of UNRWA is a clear violation of the UN Charter which explicitly forbids these attacks on any UN body.

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

This will only compound Israel’s burgeoning international pariah status, as will a return to war in Gaza. Such a catastrophic turn of events would be a lose-lose for all, not least Israel itself.

Chris Gunness was UNRWA’s Director of Communications from 2007 until 2020

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