The U.N. Palestinian relief agency's work of delivering aid and other services across Gaza and the occupied territories continues despite an Israeli ban on the agency's operations, UNRWA officials said.
"Our clinics across the occupied West Bank including East Jerusalem are open while the humanitarian operation in Gaza continues," it said on Friday as the ban took effect. "We are committed to staying and delivering."
The United Nations, governments and international organizations urged Israel to let UNRWA keep working, citing its crucial role in supporting Palestinian refugees; some 5.9 million were eligible for UNRWA's services.
"We ask the government of Israel to abide by its international obligations and live up to its responsibility to ensure full, rapid, safe and unhindered humanitarian assistance and the provision of basic services to the civilian population," France, Germany and the United Kingdom said jointly.
Belgium's foreign ministry issued a separate statement calling the agency "indispensable and irreplaceable," with Norway also expressing support for UNRWA.
Despite these appeals, two laws passed by the Knesset in October took effect: one banning Israel's government from any cooperation or contact with UNRWA, the second revoking a 1967 treaty allowing the agency to provide aid in Israeli-controlled territories.
"We continue to provide services," said Juliette Touma, UNRWA's communications director. "In Gaza, UNRWA continues to be the backbone of the international humanitarian response. We continue to have international personnel in Gaza, and we continue to bring in trucks of basic supplies."
An agency 'needed more than ever'
Created in 1949, just one year after Israel's founding, UNRWA is deeply intertwined with Palestinian infrastructure from health to education to food deliveries. It provides schooling for 330,000 children across Gaza and the occupied territories and serves as Gaza's largest health provider, conducting around 17,000 consultations daily.
"Gaza is in ruins, and UNRWA is needed more than ever," Norwegian's foreign minister, Espen Barthe Eide, said while calling the ban "extremely dramatic."
Since the ceasefire began, UNRWA has handled 60% of food deliveries. And since the war started in Oct. 2023, the agency has delivered two-thirds of all food assistance, housed over 1 million displaced people and vaccinated a quarter of a million children against polio.
"When the U.N. General Assembly established UNRWA in 1949, the international community committed to ensuring the basic needs of Palestine refugees until a political solution between Israel and Palestinians is in place,” Eide said. "We cannot abandon this responsibility now."
UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini warned the international community before the ban took effect that the agency's collapse would lead to a "breakdown of social order" across Gaza, which already struggles with lawlessness amid a growing power vacuum. He called full implementation of the new laws "disastrous” and a threat to the ceasefire.
"At stake is the fate of millions of Palestinians, the ceasefire, and the prospects for a political solution that brings lasting peace and security," Lazzarini told the U.N. Security Council. "Curtailing our operations now – outside a political process, and when trust in the international community is so low – will undermine the ceasefire. It will sabotage Gaza's recovery and political transition."
Agencies say UNRWA has an irreplaceable role
Israeli officials maintain that UNRWA's work is not crucial for Palestinians and can be transferred to other aid organizations or U.N. agencies. David Mencer, an Israeli government spokesperson, said UNRWA's responsibilities could be passed to other U.N. bodies like the World Food Program and UNICEF.
"I think it's going to be a gradual process until other agencies will step in and will take their positions," Israel's U.N. representative, Danny Danon, told the U.N. Security Council.
The United States supported this position. "UNRWA exaggerating the effects of the laws and suggesting that they will force the entire humanitarian response to halt is irresponsible and dangerous," said Dorothy Shea, U.S. deputy ambassador to the U.N. "UNRWA is not, and never has been, the only option for providing humanitarian assistance in Gaza."
Yet the agencies cited as potential replacements disagree. Both WFP and UNICEF condemned the ban on their sister agency. Médecins Sans Frontières, operating in Gaza since the war's start, warned that UNRWA's end would be "devastating" for Palestinian healthcare access.
"No other organization can replace UNRWA's health provision in Gaza and the West Bank," said Claire Nicolet, MSF deputy head of emergencies. "Restricting a U.N. organization with a mandate by the General Assembly sets a dangerous precedent threatening the delivery of impartial humanitarian aid and is part of a long-running campaign against UNRWA."
Disputed allegations
Israel's ban follows allegations that agency staff participated in the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. An independent review led by former French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna found "neutrality related issues," such as staff expressing political views publicly, but no evidence supporting Israel's claims.
The review group reported that Israeli authorities had not responded to repeated requests for "names and supporting evidence that would enable UNRWA to open an investigation."
A separate U.N. investigation concluded that nine of UNRWA's 13,000 staff "may have" participated in the attacks – and they were fired. However, the U.N. Office of Internal Oversight Services said it could not independently authenticate information used by Israel to support the allegations.
At least 333 humanitarian workers, including 233 UNRWA employees, have been killed by Israel in Gaza. This represents the largest number of U.N. staff ever killed in a conflict, surpassing the 102 deaths from the collapse of the U.N. mission headquarters in the 2010 Haiti earthquake.
"It's not the first time that this organization has faced challenges, so we are adaptable," said UNRWA's Jerusalem spokesperson Jonathan Fowler. "But this is the first time we've faced something of this scale and this level of existential threat for us. This is an absolutely desperate situation."
