Jerusalem: Israeli lawmakers on Monday passed legislation that could threaten the work of the main UN agency providing aid to people in Gaza by barring it from operating on Israeli soil. The bill bans the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, or UNRWA, from conducting “any activity” or providing any service inside Israel.
The legislation, which wouldn’t take effect immediately, risks collapsing the already fragile aid distribution process at a moment when the humanitarian crisis in Gaza is worsening and Israel is under increased US pressure to ramp up aid.
The vote passed 92-10 and followed a fiery debate between supporters of the law and its opponents, mostly members of Arab parliamentary parties. A second bill severing diplomatic ties with UNRWA was also being voted on later Monday.
Taken together, these bills would signal a new low in relations between Israel and UNRWA, which Israel accuses of maintaining close ties with Hamas militants. The changes would also be a serious blow to the agency and to Palestinians in Gaza who have become reliant upon it for aid throughout more than a year of devastating war.
The bills risk crippling the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza. More than 1.9 million Palestinians are displaced from their homes and Gaza faces widespread shortages of food, water and medicine.
Israel has alleged that some of UNRWA’s thousands of staff members participated in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas’ attacks that sparked the war in Gaza. It also has said hundreds of its staff have militant ties and that it has found Hamas military assets near or under UNRWA facilities. The agency denies it knowingly aids armed groups and says it acts quickly to purge any suspected militants from its ranks.
The bills, which do not include provisions for alternative organizations to oversee its work, have been strongly criticised by international aid groups and a handful of Israel’s Western allies. UNRWA provides education, health care and other basic services to millions of Palestinian refugees across the region, including in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
The bills would go into effect 60 to 90 days after Israel’s Foreign Ministry notifies the U.N., according to the spokesperson of lawmaker Dan Illouz, one of the co-sponsors of one of the bills.
“If it passes and if it’s implemented, it’s a disaster” said Juliette Touma, communications director for the agency.
“UNRWA is the largest humanitarian organization in Gaza … Who can do its job?”
Death toll in Gaza surpasses 43,000 as Israeli raids continue
With no end in sight to the war, officials in Gaza reported Monday that the death toll from the yearlong fighting surpassed 43,000. The Palestinian Health Ministry’s count does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but it says more than half of the dead are women and children.
The rising death toll comes as Israel refocuses its offensive on Gaza’s hard-hit north, including on a hospital where the military says militants were operating from.
Israeli forces raided the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza on Friday. An Israeli military official, speaking Monday on condition of anonymity in keeping with regulations, said there was heavy fighting around the hospital, though not inside it, and that weapons were found inside the facility.
The military said Monday the raid had ended. Israel has raided several hospitals in Gaza over the course of the yearlong war, saying Hamas and other militants use them for military purposes. Palestinian medical officials deny those allegations and accuse the military of recklessly endangering civilians.
The Israeli military said it detained 100 suspected Hamas militants in the latest raid. The Israeli official said medical staff were detained and searched because some of the militants had disguised themselves as medics.
The World Health Organization accused Israel of detaining 44 male hospital staff. It was not immediately clear why there was a discrepancy in the figures. Palestinian medical officials said the hospital, which was treating some 200 patients, was heavily damaged in the raid.
The Israeli military has called on Palestinians to evacuate northern Gaza, where it has been waging a large offensive for more than three weeks. The official said the operation in the northern Gaza city of Jabaliya would last “several more weeks.”
The UN said earlier this month at least 400,000 people are in northern Gaza, an area that was an early target of Israel’s retaliatory war. Hunger there is rampant as the amount of humanitarian aid reaching the north has plummeted over the past month.
