Fate of U.N. Palestinian Refugee Agency in Limbo as Israel Readies Ban

The Washington Post / Ruby Mellen, Heidi Levine

16:10 JST, January 8, 2025

QALANDIA CAMP, West Bank – The U.N. agency that provides aid and services to millions of Palestinians across the Middle East may soon be forced to end its operations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as Israel prepares to enact twin laws banning the organization’s work in Israeli territory and prohibiting contact between its staff and government officials.

The legislation, passed with near-unanimity by Israel’s Knesset in October, is set to go into effect later this month. It could compel the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) to dismantle what is essentially a quasi-state in the Palestinian territories, built over generations to serve a growing population of refugees and their descendants.

Israel has already taken significant steps to handicap UNRWA’s operations in Gaza, where it alleged last year that 19 of the agency’s 13,000 workers participated in the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks. An internal U.N. investigation found in August that nine of the accused “may have been involved” and that Israel provided insufficient or no evidence for the other cases.

Still, Israel has restricted aid deliveries and damaged or destroyed hundreds of the agency’s buildings in strikes the military says targeted Hamas. Now, there are fears that the agency could be crippled by a similar crackdown in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, where together it provides employment, education, health care and sanitation services to more than 900,000 registered refugees.

Entire communities have relied on UNRWA for generations, and Palestinian officials say that even if they could fill the gaps left by the agency, doing so could strip the refugees of their legal status, which includes the right to return to their homes in what is now Israel.

“It’s a nightmare,” said Thaer Jalloud, who oversees UNRWA’s operations in the central West Bank.

The region includes the Qalandia refugee camp, which is home to more than 16,000 Palestinians. Jalloud manages about 1,100 staff members, including teachers, doctors, janitors and garbage collectors, who worry that they could soon be out of work. He also fields calls from anxious parents, wondering whether they will still be able to send their children to school.

He said Israeli officials haven’t told him yet whether the law will force the school to shut down. “We are not developing any contingency plan,” he said. “The ones who passed the laws should make the plans, not us.”

The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would not comment on the future of UNRWA or the implementation of the new laws. In December, an Israeli security official told journalists that “in Gaza, we will do everything possible to ensure other international organizations take UNRWA’s place.” The official spoke on the condition of anonymity, according to rules set by the Israeli military.

“Regarding the West Bank – if I were an adviser to the Palestinian Authority, I would suggest they replace UNRWA. It’s not that complicated,” the official added.

UNRWA was founded in 1949 to aid Palestinian refugees who fled or were expelled from their homes during the first Arab-Israeli war. In 1967, when Israel captured East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, the agency entered into an agreement with the Israeli government to provide services to refugees in the territories it controlled.

But Israeli officials have criticized UNRWA and its work for years, contending that the agency fuels anti-Israeli sentiment among Palestinian refugees by encouraging their right to return. Even before the allegations about the Oct. 7 attacks, the Israeli government had condemned UNRWA for being infiltrated by Hamas operatives in Gaza, a charge the agency denies.

Israel has not told UNRWA how the laws will impact its operations, said Juliette Touma, the agency’s communications director. Among the chief concerns, she said, is the ban on Israeli officials communicating with UNRWA employees, which could hamper the flow of supplies, the issuing of visas and the safety of staff.

In Gaza, all aid deliveries have to be coordinated and deconflicted with the Israeli army, Touma said. “We go only when they give us the green light.” If coordination is prohibited, it would be impossible to ensure safety for staff, she noted.

Sam Rose, who leads UNRWA’s affairs in Gaza, noted that coordination with Israel throughout the war has not guaranteed staffers’ safety. More than 260 UNRWA employees have been killed in Gaza, the agency says, many while at home or in displacement shelters with their families. Israel has denied targeting aid workers.

U.N. officials are also confused about what the law defines as Israeli territory, leaving refugee camps in East Jerusalem and the West Bank in limbo.

UNRWA spends $60 million a month on salaries and operational costs across the region – which also encompasses Jordan, Syria and Lebanon – and relies primarily on donor contributions. In the wake of the Israeli allegations, countries including Britain, Canada, Japan and the United States said they would suspend funding. All have since resumed their support, citing the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, except the United States, UNRWA’s largest donor.

Sweden, which donated about $40 million to the agency in 2024, announced in December that it would end funding in response to the Israeli ban, a move that surprised UNRWA officials in the West Bank. Sweden’s Foreign Ministry criticized Israel’s legislation in a statement to The Washington Post but said it was diverting money to “ensure that Swedish support can reach those in need in the most effective way possible.”

The lack of money has already forced UNRWA to implement some austerity measures, said Hanadi Abu Taqa, head of the agency’s work in the northern West Bank. It has almost no budget to replace staff members who quit or retire, and limited funds to repair vehicles or equipment.

School classroom sizes have increased and students are getting less attention, said Wafaa Marahil, principal of the girls’ middle school in the Balata refugee camp on the outskirts of Nablus.

Subhiyeh Abu Rwais, 62, lives in a small home deep inside the narrow, densely populated alleyways of Balata. Her parents were refugees from Jaffa and she has relied on the group her whole life, as have her eight children and 52 grandchildren.

Without the free education and health care provided by UNRWA, “we will die,” Rwais said.

Balata’s clinic serves about 80,000 patients a year, according to its chief doctor, Haitham Abu Aita. It provides vaccines, X-rays, blood tests, postpartum care and treatment for chronic conditions. He said he worried that the new laws would severely impede the importing of medical equipment into the West Bank.

Already, the agency struggles to provide basic services. Heaps of trash were piled up last week outside UNRWA’s office in Aroub camp in the southern West Bank. Its trademark white garbage trucks, emblazoned with blue U.N. letters, hadn’t come for days.

At last, the agency rented a truck from the Palestinian Authority. Workers used shovels and bare hands to clear the debris.

While some residents expressed hope that the Palestinian Authority will take over from UNRWA in the parts of the West Bank it controls, Palestinian officials say it is not their responsibility. “That should be on the international community,” said Ahmad Thoukan, head of the Popular Services Committee, a subset of the Palestine Liberation Organization, which represents Palestinians internationally and liaises with UNRWA staff in the camps.

Nasser Sharayaa, executive director of the PLO’s office of refugees in the West Bank, said replacing UNRWA would amount to invalidating Palestinians’ status as refugees: “If we as Palestinians agreed to be the alternative solution to the absence of UNRWA, then we are admitting that we are denying our right of return,” he said.

For many Israelis, this sentiment is the main reason the group should be banished. “The organization provides the fuel and support for the Palestinian vision that there should be no Jewish state and that one day they will actually attain that goal,” said Einat Wilf, a former Knesset member who has written and spoken extensively against UNRWA.

Palestinians say UNRWA can be dismantled only when they are no longer refugees: “Close it with a key, give us two weeks, put us on buses and send us back to our original homes,” said Abu Ahmed, 58, a resident of Aroub camp.

Farther north, as rain pattered against the walls of the girls school in the Qalandia camp, 14-year-old Lamar Mizher was giving a presentation to her classmates.

“Elections are the tools of freedom and democracy,” Mizher said. “The voice of the people is the strength of society.”

The temperature was just above 50 degrees. Girls wore their puffy coats inside the unheated classroom as they listened, textbooks dutifully opened, pens at the ready.

“Education,” said Marahil, the school principal in Balata. “That is our weapon.”