By Lara Bird-Leakey
30 Oct 2024
In an unsurprising yet unprecedented attack, the Israeli Knesset voted on Monday 28 Oct to ban the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (for Palestinian refugees) inside Israel and the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory (oPt).
The legislation states that UNRWA “shall not establish any representation, provide any services or conduct any activities” in the territory of Israel. This systematic dismantling of the Agency is especially egregious in the context of the past year and Israel’s destruction of several UNRWA buildings and killing more than 200 of its personnel.
Israeli lawmakers additionally voted to declare the agency a terror group. It is reported that the evacuation of the UNRWA headquarters in East Jerusalem has already begun.
The most acute repercussions will be felt by the 1.9 m Palestinians displaced in Gaza. But UNRWA was established to provide lifesaving aid to Palestinian refugees in Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria after they were forcefully ejected from their land in 1948. This is a direct attack on Palestinians across the region.
This legislation, as with the destruction of the UNRWA building in East Jerusalem, constitutes a serious breach of international law. This is consistent with Israel’s persistent attacks against the Agency since its creation by the UN General Assembly, in December 1949, when it had become evident that Israel had no intention of meeting its obligation, under the UN Charter, to allow the Palestinian refugees to return to their homes.
The ability of UN organs to function without the intervention of member states is codified in the Charter. Article 105(1). This states that “The Organization shall enjoy in the territory of each of its Members such privileges and immunities as are necessary for the fulfilment of its purposes.” This is bolstered by The General Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations, which confirms in no uncertain terms that:
“The premises of the United Nations shall be inviolable. The property and assets of the United Nations, wherever located and by whomsoever held, shall be immune from search, requisition, confiscation, expropriation and any other form of interference, whether by executive, administrative, judicial or legislative action.”
There is no deviation from or qualification to this section. The inviolability of the Charter is established purely to ensure that the same rules and regulations bind Member States to the standards of law and humanity. And yet, the Israeli Government has established what could become a new norm of flagrantly dismantling the rules-based international order, unless there are immediate consequences from a consensual global community.
Israel’s denial of the right of return
Israel’s contempt for the Palestinian refugees is not new. The Zionist rhetoric that Palestine was a “land without a people for a people without land” was confronted by the more than 700,000 Palestinian civilians that were displaced during the Nakba, the Catastrophe, of 1948. The UN General Assembly Resolution 194 of 1948, which confirmed the Palestinian right of return to their homes and to live in peace with their neighbours, was ardently denied and defied by Israel. This denial and defiance was initially what forced the future of Palestinian refugees back to the UN. More than 40 years later, during the Oslo peace talks with Israel, conducted in secret in the early 1990s, Fateh failed to get Resolution 194 included within the Declaration of Principles. The establishment of UNRWA is viewed, critically by some, as an ‘under the rug’ approach by the United States, the European Union or the UN being forced to reconcile a longer-term solution for implementing the Palestinian right to return to their homes.
Nonetheless, it is indisputable that UNRWA has become an irreplaceable lifeline for Palestinians. At the time of the Knesset vote, some 6m individuals relied on UNRWA for critical aid throughout the Near East.
This is one reason Israel feels so threatened by UNRWA. The Knesset legislation will succeed in two separate aims, one militaristic and one political: it will have a detrimental effect on the sustainability of life in Gaza, increasing the risk that those who are not killed in the continuing Israeli onslaught are likely to starve or die of disease.
Israel’s attacks on UN agency operators in general and UNRWA in particular have been evident since 7 Oct, 2023, with more than 200 UNRWA staff reported killed by Israel during the past year. However, it is far from the first time that Israel has conducted concerted attacks on the agency. In 2008, the UN Secretary-General conducted an Inquiry into Israel’s attacks on UNRWA, which concluded that the direct and intentional strikes on the agency’s properties amounted to “an egregious breach of the inviolability of the United Nations premises and a failure to accord the property and assets of the Organisations immunity from interference”. The compensation to be paid to UNRWA by Israel was over $10.4m.
Israel violates all the UK’s red lines
Israel’s allegation earlier this year that 11 UNRWA staff were actually Hamas militants was met with instant support from Israel’s allies, with 16 countries immediately suspending funding for the Agency. UNRWA fired nine staff members and an investigation was conducted, commissioned by the UN Secretary-General. All states have now resumed funding. However, the damage was done. Israel never produced any evidence for their allegations, and the decision to suspend funding and call into the question the credibility of UNRWA were all that they needed to achieve. Once again, Israel benefitted from the knowledge that powerful allies would immediately support their charges, which the US and the UK, among many other Western states (who provide the lion’s share of UNRWA funding) did for some months.
The Balfour Project says that the decision by the Knesset cannot be met with the same apathy that has greeted previous attacks on UNRWA. On 29 Oct, Norway identified its intention to ask the UN General Assembly to request an Advisory Opinion from the International Court of Justice as to whether Israel is violating international law. This will be framed as per Israel’s obligations as an occupying power. Israel may not consider itself to be an occupying force in Gaza, but its belief that it is not occupying the area is not necessary for the law to apply. It has been widely held since 2006 that Israel’s presence in the oPt constitutes a de facto occupation. This was further confirmed by the ICJ Opinion of 19 July, 2024, when the court stated, “Israel is obligated to administer the occupied territory in a manner that benefits the local population.”
There has not been a single red line drawn by the UK Government since 7 Oct, 2023, that Israel has not crossed. If the UK Government does not contribute, in meaningful and intentional ways, to the defence of UNRWA and the condemnation of the Knesset, then it is handing Israeli another carte blanche for, inter alia, its deadly campaigns in the occupied Palestinian territory The growing impunity behind which Israel operates in its apparent mission to erase the Palestinian population, and to remove the cornerstones of international law, can no longer be denied or ignored by the international community, especially those Western members, like the US and the UK Governments, who continue to support it behind a veil of mild rebuke and minimal measures.
Lara Bird-Leakey works as a Senior Policy Researcher in the Houses of Parliament, at Westminster, and is on the Executive Committee of the Balfour Project. She is conducting her PhD on UK Foreign Policy and International Humanitarian Law at Kings College London.