Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara was asked by over a dozen MKs from the coalition on Sunday to instruct the government to abide in full to two laws that came into effect in late January, banning UNRWA operations in east Jerusalem and prohibiting Israeli institutions from cooperating with the agency in the West Bank and Gaza.
The MKs, led by Dan Illouz (Likud), argued in the letter they sent to the A-G that the law was not being sufficiently enforced, and blamed Baharav-Miara for delaying the law’s implementation.
They were referring to reports that she had cautioned ministers to interpret the law in a way that did not violate international law, which grants operational independence to UN agencies, including UNRWA.
The MKs who supported the legislation argued that the organization in Gaza was infiltrated by Hamas, that its facilities in Gaza were used by Hamas’s military wing, that some of its employees had participated in the October 7 massacre, and that UNRWA’s school curricula included positive attitudes towards violent resistance against Israel.
The laws were passed in January with large majorities, including MKs from the opposition.
“We, the undersigned members of the Knesset, demand the immediate and full enforcement of the laws for closing UNRWA, both the law for severing ties with UNRWA and the law to cease its activities in Israel, according to your responsibility to ensure that state systems operate within the law,” the MKs wrote.
“These two laws were passed in the Knesset by an overwhelming majority. Their wording is clear, and their purpose is unequivocal: To remove UNRWA from operating within the sovereign territory of the State of Israel and to cut off all institutional contact with it,” they continued.
“This is not an ambiguous intention but a clear, binding, and precise piece of legislation that has received the sovereign’s approval,” the MKs wrote.
They listed a series of alleged violations of the law, including that the IDF’s Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) division has continued to collaborate with UNRWA; that UNRWA’s bank accounts have not yet been closed; that UNRWA offices in Jerusalem are partially operational; and that services that were previously provided by UNRWA have not yet been transferred to the relevant Israeli authorities.
The MKs listed an independent oversight committee comprised of a number of right-wing NGOs as it source, as well as closed-door meetings in the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.
According to the MKs, “Classified and troubling information has been revealed to us as members of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, illustrating the extent to which lack of enforcement harms sovereignty, security, and the rule of law.”
They continued, “The failure to implement the law is not just an internal failure; it is also an international humiliation. The State of Israel has taken a firm stance against UNRWA, paid a diplomatic price for it, and presented its position on every possible stage.”
“Yet now it turns out that while we speak loudly, we are unable to implement our sovereign decisions in practice,” they wrote.
The “diplomatic price” in question includes an ongoing case in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague regarding an advisory opinion on Israel’s obligations to facilitate aid delivered by states and international groups, including UNRWA, to Palestinians.
As for the ICJ, it heard arguments in late April and has yet to issue its opinion.
Israel did not participate in the arguments at the court and chose instead to file a written opinion.
The US supported Israel at the hearing. It relayed Israel’s concerns regarding UNRWA, arguing that “an occupational power retains a margin of appreciation concerning what relief schemes to permit,” and that “even if an organization offering relief is an impartial humanitarian organization, and even if it is a major actor, occupation law does not compel an occupational power to allow and facilitate that specific actor’s relief operations.”
IN AN opinion issued a few days prior to the ICJ hearing in an unrelated civil suit, the US Justice Department reversed an opinion it issued during the previous administration.
It wrote that while the UN enjoys immunity from legal action in the US, its subsidiary bodies, such as UNRWA, do not. The letter said that UNRWA is not classified as a “subsidiary organ” of the UN under the International Organizations Immunities Act.
UNRWA’s six schools in east Jerusalem were shut down on May 8 after the Education Ministry issued orders on April 8 to all six school principals telling them to cease operations within 30 days.
Three of the schools were inside the Shuafat refugee camp, and three others were in other east Jerusalem neighborhoods.
However, a statement by the Education Ministry did not mention UNRWA laws as the basis for shutting down the schools.
“The six UNRWA schools that operated in east Jerusalem were functioning without a license and in violation of the Schools Supervision Law (1969), and therefore, a closure order was issued against them,” the ministry said.
“The Education Ministry, the Jerusalem Municipality, and the Jerusalem and Israel Tradition Ministry had prepared in advance, ensuring high-quality educational solutions, significantly superior to those previously provided in the closed institutions instead,” the ministry continued.
“In recent months, the students’ parents were directed to the registration division of Jerusalem’s education administration to receive an organized placement for their children,” it added.
According to the statement, “Professional officials at the Education Ministry and Jerusalem’s education administration are overseeing the process and will continue to ensure comprehensive educational support in response to any parental inquiries.”
“The ministry will guarantee the immediate and optimal integration of all students,” it said.
Contrary to the statement, however, very few students have registered so far in alternative frameworks offered by the municipality, the Post has learned.
PER A statement on May 8 on X/Twitter by Roland Friedrich, the director of UNRWA affairs for the West Bank and east Jerusalem, “Heavily armed Israeli forces, together with officials from the Israeli Education Ministry and the Jerusalem Municipality, forcefully entered” the three Shuafat schools with the intention of shutting them down.
Friedrich posted a video showing military police entering a school courtyard in combat gear and with their rifles drawn.
The forces “detained a staff member, took the ID numbers of staff present, and ordered them to dismiss the students immediately. This was at a time when more than 550 students between six and 15 years of age and their teachers were present in class,” Friedrich wrote.
The other three schools shut down prior to the entry of forces.
Friedrich said that the closures were “traumatizing [to the] 800 young children who are at immediate risk of losing their access to education.”
“They have no alternatives. Their current school year, which runs until 20 June 2025, has ended by force,” he said.
“UNRWA schools are operationally independent and inviolable under international law,” the organization said. “Israel is obliged to protect them, just as it is obliged to protect all other UN staff and facilities at all times.”
Friedrich wrote on X on Tuesday that security officials had visited the schools again to ensure they had remained closed.
Contrary to the schools, UNRWA-run clinics have remained open in east Jerusalem. The Kalandiya Training Center, which straddles the border between east Jerusalem and the West Bank, has remained open as well, despite an attempt to shut it down in February.
The training center serves approximately 350 students per year who mostly come from across the West Bank to learn a trade in dormitory conditions.
Its demographic is males between the ages of 15 and 19, mostly from non-academic backgrounds and relatively low on the socioeconomic ladder.
COGAT issued the following response: “The Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories [division] is fully implementing the 2024 law for the cessation of UNRWA’s activities, which prohibits contact between the organization and Israeli authorities and public officials. Accordingly, there is no communication or interaction with the organization’s employees, whether in Gaza or in Judea and Samaria.”