International staff working for the UN’s main agency serving Palestinians, Unrwa, have been forced to leave after Israel’s ban on the agency came into effect.
The UN flag flew above the headquarters in Jerusalem on Thursday morning, but Palestinian staff were also not present at the site because of security concerns. There were plans for a “celebration” by Israeli rightwingers, some of whom later vandalised signs and replaced the UN flag with an Israeli one.
The agency said it had received no communications from Israel on how the ban would be implemented, most crucially over the delivery of aid to Gaza. However, Stéphane Dujarric, a spokesperson for the UN chief, António Guterres, said Unrwa would continue working in all Palestinian territories, including East Jerusalem.
“Unrwa clinics across the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, are open. Meanwhile, the humanitarian operations in Gaza continue, including with Unrwa work there,” she said.
The Guardian understands that Unrwa trucks did cross from Israel to Gaza on Thursday. It remained unclear how that was coordinated with Israeli officials.
The implementation of the Israeli law banning Unrwa came on the same day that the Norwegian government said it would contribute $24m (£19m) to the agency.
“Gaza is in ruins, and Unrwa’s help is more necessary than ever,” the Norwegian foreign minister, Espen Barth Eide, said in a statement. “It is extremely dramatic for Palestine that Israeli laws come into force that in practice can prevent Unrwa from working.”
The move was also condemned by the Spanish government. “The government rejects the entry into force of the Knesset laws that prevent Unrwa operations in the occupied Palestinian territories, and calls for their application to be suspended,” it said. “Spain expresses its deepest concern about the impact that this decision will have on the humanitarian situation in Gaza and the rest of the occupied Palestinian territories, jeopardising the ceasefire.”
Beyond the largely empty headquarters compound, other Unrwa facilities in East Jerusalem continued working.
Students in the Shuafat refugee camp in East Jerusalem, just beyond Israel’s concrete separation barrier with the West Bank, attended Unrwa classrooms as usual on Thursday morning.
In Jerusalem’s Old City too, Manal Khayat, the head nurse at the Unrwa-run health centre, said that while Israeli authorities had told her two days earlier that they would shut down the clinic after the ban took effect, they had not specified when, and staff were not prevented from working on Thursday.
“I don’t feel relieved yet, because we don’t know what will happen,” she said. “The main product of this whole decision is confusion and fear.”
The Israeli ban went ahead on Thursday after the country’s supreme court rejected a petition by the Palestinian human rights group Adalah contesting the new law.
The court did note that the legislation “prohibits Unrwa activity only on the sovereign territory of the state of Israel” but did not prohibit such activity in Gaza and the West Bank. The ban does apply, however, to Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem, where Unrwa has a field headquarters for its operations in the West Bank.
About 25 international staff left on Wednesday after Israel refused to issue visas or extend existing ones. International staff make up about 2% of the agency’s workforce. “The headquarters is still there, and the flag is still up,” said Juliette Touma, an Unrwa spokesperson.
“It’s a UN compound, which means it must be protected. We don’t have plans to close our operations,” she said. “But we are in the dark. We have not received any instructions from Israel how the ban will be enforced beyond being told to vacate.”
The most serious feared impact is in Gaza, where Unrwa is the largest agency delivering aid. Its trucks cross into Gaza from Israel, requiring coordination with the Israeli authorities.
Touma said: “If [the ban means] no contact at an operational level, then the fate of the ceasefire is in serious jeopardy because we are the most serious player and biggest deliverer of aid.”
Officially, Unrwa is now banned from operating on Israeli soil and contact between it and Israeli officials is also forbidden, although it is unclear what this might mean in practical terms.
Set up in 1949 under a mandate from the UN general assembly, the agency has provided support for Palestinian refugees around the Middle East for over 70 years but has long faced attacks from Israeli officials. Its offices and staff in Israel play a major role in the provision of healthcare and education to Palestinians, including those living in the Gaza Strip, which has been devastated by the war between Israel and Hamas.
The agency’s chief, Philippe Lazzarini, said Unrwa’s capacity to distribute aid “far exceeds that of any other entity”, describing Israel’s actions as a “relentless assault … harming the lives and future of Palestinians across the occupied Palestinian territory”.
Israel has long campaigned against Unrwa, claiming its existence has prolonged the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. The hostility intensified after Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack on Israel, with accusations that some Unrwa employees participated in the assault.
Despite repeated claims by Israel that Unrwa had been infiltrated by Hamas on a large scale, a series of investigations, including one led by the former French foreign minister Catherine Colonna, found some “neutrality-related issues” at Unrwa but stressed Israel had not provided evidence for its headline allegation.
