Despite the protest, influential politicians in the Netherlands and Czechia welcomed the move.
By Canaan Lidor, JNS
The U.S. State Department on Tuesday reportedly reiterated its “deep concern” over Israel’s banning of UNRWA activities through legislation that prompted condemnations internationally.
Following the passage of the ban Monday at the Knesset in Jerusalem, multiple media outlets, including Axios, quoted unnamed State Department officials using the above expression. State Secretary Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin used the same language in a letter they sent on Oct. 13 to Israeli official about the legislation.
The United Kingdom, the European Union and multiple Muslim-majority countries also criticized the move. However, some influential allies of Israel in the E.U. welcomed it.
The laws banning UNRWA from having a presence in Israel and prohibiting Israeli officials from having contact with the body’s representatives will go into effect in 90 days, according to the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Officials from his government, including Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, have accused UNRWA of facilitating terrorism. This followed revelations of the complicity of multiple UNRWA employees in Hamas’s massacre in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Israel says hundreds of UNRWA employees in Gaza and beyond are affiliated with Hamas.
UNRWA bosses dispute this, but have suspended or fired about 20 people over suspected terrorism affiliations since last year. Israeli officials said these actions failed to address in any serious way UNRWA’s terrorism issue.
“UNRWA workers involved in terrorist activities against Israel must be held accountable. Since avoiding a humanitarian crisis is also essential, sustained humanitarian aid must remain available in Gaza now and in the future,” read a statement by Netanyahu’s office after the vote.
“In the 90 days before this legislation takes effect—and after—we stand ready to work with our international partners to ensure Israel continues to facilitate humanitarian aid to civilians in Gaza in a way that does not threaten Israel’s security,” the statement continued.
E.U. officials and member states also criticized the legislation on Tuesday.
Josep Borrell, the E.U. High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, tweeted that the new laws “would de facto render UNRWA’s vital operations in Gaza impossible, and seriously hamper its provision of services in the West Bank.” The laws stand “in stark contradiction to international law and the fundamental principle of humanity,” he added.
The governments of Spain, Ireland and Slovenia in a joint statement condemned the legislation, writing that it “sets a very serious precedent for the work of the United Nations and for all organizations of the multilateral system.” Norway, which is not a member of the E.U., also joined this statement.
The foreign ministers of Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea and the U.K. published ahead of the vote a joint statement urging Israel to halt the legislation.
“UNRWA provides essential and life-saving humanitarian aid and basic services to Palestinian refugees in Gaza, east Jerusalem, the West Bank and throughout the region,” the statement read.
However, key political figures in E.U. member states welcomed the move, including Geert Wilders, the leader of the largest party in the Netherlands, the Party for Freedom, which is part of the ruling coalition and has senior representatives in the government Cabinet.
“Well done Israel. Terrorists are terrorists, whatever their disguise. Never compromise with evil,” Wilders tweeted Tuesday, ending his post with the hashtag #amisraelchai.
Tomas Zdechovsky, a European Parliament lawmaker for the Christian and Democratic Union—Czechoslovak People’s Party, which is part of the ruling coalition in Czechia, tweeted about the laws: “This is good news. UNRWA’s reputation is pretty tarnished.”
Czechia and Hungary are among Israel’s allies within the European Union that have prevented consensus E.U. condemnations of Israel and the unanimity required for some foreign-policy moves by the bloc as a whole, including imposing sanctions.
UNRWA says on its website that it has about 30,000 staff, most of them Palestinians, with more than half working in the Gaza Strip and the rest operating in Judea and Samaria, eastern Jerusalem, Jordan and Lebanon. It offers food, water, medical assistance and other services to about 5 million people it considers Palestinian refugees.
The U.N. agency, whose annual budget of more than $1 billion comes mostly from donations from the United States and European countries, employs a unique and controversial definition of Palestinian refugees that critics say is designed to perpetuate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
UNRWA considers not only Arabs who fled pre-state Israel in 1947-1949 as refugees, but also their descendants in perpetuity, regardless of their naturalization elsewhere, leading to a massive increase in that category’s numbers. All other refugees are handled by the UNHCR agency, which does not recognize the descendants of refugees as such, and revokes the title of anyone who is naturalized abroad.
Israel and others have accused UNRWA of teaching anti-Israel and antisemitic incitement at its schools for decades before Oct. 7, 2023, when some 3,000 Hamas terrorists murdered about 1,200 Israelis and abducted another 251.
Following the revelations about the complicity in terrorism by UNRWA staff, multiple countries suspended their donations to UNRWA, but many resumed them. The United States and New Zealand are, to date, the only countries whose UNRWA contributions remain frozen.
Among the evidence for UNRWA staff complicity in the massacres, Israel has cited footage showing UNRWA worker Faisal Ali Mussalem al-Naami and a colleague loading the body of Israeli Yonatan Samerano into a vehicle in Sderot.
On Sept. 29, Hamas admitted that Fatah Sharif Abu al-Amin, chairman of UNRWA’s Teachers’ Association, was its commander in Lebanon. The agency had suspended Abu al-Amin in March, yet after his death denied knowing he was involved in terrorism.
UNRWA-employed Arabic teacher Yusef Zidan Suleiman al-Hawajara was recorded bragging to a friend on Oct. 7 about capturing a female hostage. (“We have female hostages, I captured one!” he says in a recording released by the IDF.)
Former Hamas leader in Lebanon Fateh Sherif Abu el-Amin (circled) at an undated UNRWA event. Source: UN Watch.
In July, Israel’s Foreign Ministry published a list of names and I.D. numbers of 108 UNRWA employees Israel accuses of being Hamas terrorists. It was a “small fraction,” a Foreign Ministry official wrote, of a much larger list that includes hundreds of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad members who also worked for UNRWA. The wider list could not be released due to security considerations.