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Israel last night passed legislation that could threaten the work of the United Nations providing aid to Gaza by barring it from operating on Israeli soil. The bill bans UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, from conducting ‘any activity’ or providing any service inside Israel.
The legislation, which would not 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 pressure by the United States 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 on 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 war.
The Bills risk severely affecting the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza. Nearly 2million Palestinians are displaced from their homes and Gaza faces widespread shortages of food, water and medicine. Amir Ohana, the Knesset speaker, said on Monday: ‘Today we made history in the State of Israel. The UNRWA, an organisation that has been proven beyond any doubt to be part of Hamas, took an active during Oct 7. The kidnapping, the murder, all the actions that we know the Hamas organisation did in the State of Israel, UNRWA were an active part of it.’
International aid groups and a handful of Israel’s western allies, including the US, have voiced strong opposition. US state department spokesman Matthew Miller, speaking to reporters in Washington, said the administration was ‘deeply concerned’ by the legislation. ‘There’s nobody that can replace them right now in the middle of the crisis,’ he said. UNRWA provides education, health care and other basic services to millions of Palestinian refugees across the region, including in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Top donors suspended funding the agency when Israel first brought accusations against it. The UK resumed sending funds when the Labour government came to power in July. The Bills would come into effect 60 to 90 days after Israel’s foreign ministry notifies the UN, according to the spokesman for 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?’
Earlier on Monday, the IDF said Israeli soldiers had captured around 100 suspected Hamas fighters in a hospital in northern Gaza. A clip released by Israeli forces didn’t show militants or staff being detained but finished with footage of soldiers inspecting what appeared to be a weapons cache uncovered in a hospital room. The Gaza Strip’s health ministry said at least 19 people have been killed by Israeli airstrikes and bombardment today, 13 of them in the north of the shattered coastal territory.
Talks led by the US, Egypt and Qatar resumed on Sunday as Egypt’s president proposed an initial two-day truce to exchange four Israeli hostages of Hamas for some Palestinian prisoners, to be followed by talks within 10 days on a permanent ceasefire. Neither Hamas or Israel publicly commented on the latest round of negotiations. Meanwhile the Palestinian Civil Emergency Service said its operations had ground to a halt because of the three-week-long Israeli assault back into the north, an area where the military said it had wiped out viable Hamas combat forces earlier in the year-long war.
It said aid around 100,000 people had been left in Jabalia, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun without medical or food supplies – although the figure could not be independently verified. At least 35 people were injured after a truck rammed into a crowd of people waiting at a bus stop, in what was believed to be a terror attack in Glilot, just north of Tel Aviv on Sunday. Footage appeared to show several people, including elderly Israelis, trapped by the metal front of the white truck, as civilians were reported to have ‘shot and neutralised’ the driver.
Of those injured, at least 16 people had been transported to nearby hospitals, emergency service Magen David Adom said in a statement. The conflict erupted after Hamas fighters launched an attack on southern Israel on October 7 last year, killing 1,200 people and taking over 250 hostages, by Israeli tallies. Meanwhile 43,020 have died as a result of Israel’s retaliatory air and ground onslaught, the Gaza health ministry said in an update on Monday, with the densely populated enclave widely reduced to rubble.
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