A ban preventing UNRWA, the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees, from operating in Occupied East Jerusalem and Israel has come into force today.
The highly controversial move came into force after the Israeli Parliament voted in favour three months ago, and after a legal challenge to pause the ban was rejected by the Israeli Supreme Court on Wednesday.
Israel accuses UNRWA of having close links to Hamas in Gaza, which the organisation denies.
Nine UNRWA employees were sacked for taking part in the 7 October attacks.
Many donor countries initially suspended funding but most, including the UK, have since reinstated it.
“UNRWA equals Hamas,” an Israeli government spokesman said yesterday. “Israel has made public irrefutable evidence UNRWA is riddled with Hamas operatives.”
No evidence has been presented of those links existing in Jerusalem or the West Bank.
In the Shuafat refugee camp close to Jerusalem, Palestinian patients told us they were angry and concerned by the loss of vital services.
“I’m against this decision, we’re all against it, the whole camp,” said Amal. “Everyone has benefited from this clinic. Both West Bank and Jerusalem residents.
“I’ve been coming here ever since I was a little girl, we’ve gotten used to coming here. This really doesn’t work for us.”
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Another patient, Mohammed, was carrying boxes of prescription medicine, paid for by UNRWA because he couldn’t afford them himself.
“I have a chronic disease and I rely on a monthly prescription,” he told us. “My children get treated here; their children get vaccinated.
“And all of this is for free. I could not afford this medicine otherwise.”
Although the ban only concerns operations in Occupied East Jerusalem, Israel has also severed communication with the Agency and revoked the visas of international staff, making it extremely hard to continue services in Gaza and the West Bank.
Almost all of the two million residents of Gaza rely on UNRWA in some form. UNRWA has contacts on the ground that no other agency has or could replicate in the current crisis.
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Following the vote to ban UNRWA, the Head of the World Food Programme Cindy McCain described the agency as “indispensable” and tweeted that “the decision will have devastating consequences on food security.”
UNRWA, which was established following the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, provides medical services to at least 70,000 Palestinians in Jerusalem and runs schools for thousands of pupils as well as maintaining streets and carrying out waste disposal.
Israel says those pupils will now be transferred to municipality schools but UNRWA says there has been little to no coordination around who will replace other services.
“We have not been given any indications of plans or indeed proposals by the Israeli authorities, not in East Jerusalem, also not in the West Bank,” UNRWA’s director of West Bank operations Roland Friedrich told Sky News.
He added: “It is very concerning because it doesn’t allow us to basically coordinate, prepare and in fact, to try to see how things can be done going forward.
“The collapse of UNRWA in the West Bank and in fact also in the Gaza Strip cannot be in the interest of anybody, not of Israelis, not of Palestinians, not of neighbouring countries, and clearly also not for those who care about the ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.”
