UNRWA headquarters and schools in Gaza were destroyed by Israeli bombing (Anatolia)

The Israeli Knesset approved, in preliminary reading, a draft law prohibiting the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) from operating inside the occupied territories and Jerusalem.

After the Knesset voted on Wednesday evening, the draft must still be approved in three readings before it becomes law.

The Knesset said in a statement that the draft law was supported by 33 members and 10 members opposed it (out of 120 present) and that it would pass the draft to the Foreign Affairs and Security Committee to continue preparing it for further readings.

The draft law prohibits UNRWA from operating in the occupied territories, and directs the Israeli police to work to enforce this ban.

The Knesset draft law directs the Israeli police to enforce the UNRWA ban (Associated Press)

The project stipulates that the role of UNRWA is to provide services to Palestinian refugees only, and therefore there is no reason for it to provide any services within the borders of Israel, as there are no Palestinian refugees there, but rather residents of the state who obtain services from various state institutions, according to the statement.

The draft resolution claims that the UN agency is being used to incite and educate against hatred of Israel and harm its Jewish population, and that within the schools run by the agency in Jerusalem, what it describes as anti-Semitic material is taught.

UNRWA has many educational and health institutions in East Jerusalem, and runs the Shuafat refugee camp, which is the only camp in the city. The UN agency also has a main headquarters in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem.

Since last January 26, 18 countries, led by the United States and the European Union, have suspended their funding for UNRWA in response to Israel’s allegations that 12 of the agency’s employees, out of 13,000 employees in Gaza, participated in the “Al-Aqsa flood” last October 7 against Israel. The agency announced that it was investigating these allegations.

UNRWA was established by a decision of the United Nations General Assembly in 1949, and was mandated to provide assistance and protection to refugees in its five areas of operations: Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip.

UNRWA's tasks are to implement relief and work programs for Palestinian refugees directly in cooperation with local governments, as well as to consult with concerned governments regarding the implementation of relief and work projects and planning in preparation for the time when these services are no longer available.

A classroom run by UNRWA in a camp in Jordan (Reuters)

This agency provides its services to approximately 5.9 million people, and about two-thirds of this number live in 58 recognized refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In 2022, the number of students enrolled in the agency’s schools reached 544,710.

Israeli media reported earlier that the Israeli government had taken measures to ban the work of UNRWA in occupied Jerusalem.

The Israeli allegations against UNRWA come in light of the continued occupation aggression against Gaza, which to date has left 28,663 martyrs and 68,395 wounded, most of them children and women, in addition to thousands of missing persons, according to the Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip.

Source: Anadolu Agency