UN agency for Palestinians readies to shutter operations in East Jerusalem after Israeli ban

Tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees in Israeli-controlled East Jerusalem are poised to lose education, healthcare, and other services offered by the U.N. agency UNRWA as an Israeli restriction on the organization comes into effect on Thursday.

The Israeli government instructed UNRWA to leave its facility in East Jerusalem and stop its activities, following a law enacted last year that banned the agency and forbade Israeli officials from interacting with it. At the UNRWA offices in the Sheikh Jarrah area of East Jerusalem, employees were filling boxes and loading modular structures onto a truck on Monday.

“It’s an intolerable decision,” stated Jonathan Fowler, a representative for UNRWA, officially known as the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East.

“The individuals we assist … we cannot inform them about the future of our services by the end of this week.” Israel has yet to disclose plans for substituting UNRWA’s functions, and the Israeli prime minister’s office has not promptly reacted to a request for a statement.

For decades, UNRWA has operated schools and clinics in East Jerusalem, which is the part of the city that Israel has controlled since the 1967 war, serving tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees without a nationality. “We have everything here for us. When I heard that it will close, I was very sad because here is a place for people in need and for people who don’t have money to pay for medication,” refugee Sara Saeed said at the UNRWA medical centre in Jerusalem’s Old City.

Director of the medical centre, Hamza Al Jibrini, stated that the facility caters to 30,000 refugees. Included are individuals with diabetes and hypertension, as well as pregnant women and children who are getting vaccinated, stated nursing head Manal AlKhayat.

“Where are they going?” she inquired.  Israel’s prohibition solely applies to Israeli land, which Israel regards as including East Jerusalem. UNRWA functions in the occupied West Bank and Gaza as well, but it remained uncertain how the law would influence UNRWA’s operations in those areas.

UNRWA was founded approximately 75 years ago, assisting about 750,000 Palestinian refugees from the 1948 conflict coinciding with the establishment of Israel. Its expansive headquarters are located in an ideal spot near Jerusalem’s Old City, which hosts sacred sites for Christians, Jews, and Muslims. The agency has consistently been a nuisance to Israeli governments that viewed it as inherently antagonistic toward Israel.

Israel claims that UNRWA’s ongoing presence, decades after the 1948 war, has solidified the refugee status of multiple generations of Palestinians, whose numbers have now reached millions, and has effectively stalled the conflict. Israel frequently asserts that the agency displays anti-Israel bias and has also alleged that its personnel include members of Hamas, the Palestinian militant organization that conducted the lethal cross-border attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. Israel requests that UNRWA’s duties be transferred to other UN agencies, notably its principal refugee organization.

The U.N. dismisses claims of partiality and asserts that UNRWA’s knowledge is essential, especially in Gaza. A U.N. inquiry revealed that nine staff members of UNRWA might have participated in the Hamas attack. The agency dismissed them but stated that Israel had not shown proof of broader engagement by its personnel. UNRWA has approximately 30,000 staff members in the area, including about 13,000 in the Gaza Strip. According to the agency, over 200 UNRWA personnel have been killed in Gaza since the onset of the Gaza war.