Flanked by bulldozers, Israeli officials seized the Jerusalem headquarters of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees on Tuesday and oversaw the demolition of some of the structures in its compound.
The move further escalates Israel’s crackdown on the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, generally known by its acronym UNRWA. The organization had long been one of the leading aid agencies in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, but over the last two years the Israeli government, which has long been at odds with the agency, has passed sweeping legislation criminalizing its operations.
In a statement defending the decision to seize the compound, Oren Marmorstein, a spokesman for Israel’s foreign ministry, said UNRWA “has long ceased to be a humanitarian aid organization, serving instead as a greenhouse for terrorism.”
Philippe Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA, called the Israeli move “a new level of open & deliberate defiance of international law” in a post on social media.
UNRWA was founded in 1949 to serve Palestinians who were displaced in the wars surrounding Israel’s establishment and their descendants. The Knesset, Israel’s parliament, passed laws that banned the agency and severely curbed its activity in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. It stripped UNRWA of its diplomatic immunity and barred its facilities from receiving electricity and water.
Israeli officials have also accused UNRWA’s Gaza branch of being compromised, saying that Palestinian militant groups had managed to substantially infiltrate the organization. After the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which ignited the devastating war in Gaza, Israeli officials named 19 UNRWA employees who they say participated in the attack.
An internal U.N. inquiry found that at least nine employees may have participated in the Oct. 7 attack, and the agency fired them. The organization employs about 13,000 people in the Gaza Strip, and UNRWA’s leaders say Israel has never provided evidence to back up its claim that there had been widespread infiltration by Hamas or other groups.
The most recent legislation, passed in late December, also allowed the Israeli government to seize UNRWA’s properties, including the agency’s headquarters. At its largest, hundreds of aid workers and other people employed by UNRWA worked at the Jerusalem compound, according to Jonathan Fowler, a spokesman for the agency.
UNRWA’s international staff began leaving Israel about a year ago when the legislation first went into effect. The compound has largely been vacant since then, although Israeli officials entered it in December and put up an Israeli flag.
Under an international convention that Israel has ratified, U.N. facilities are supposed to be “inviolable,” similar to the status of a foreign embassy.
“It remains a United Nations compound, no matter what they say,” Mr. Fowler said. “Even if in December, they ripped down the U.N. flag and put up the Israeli flag.”
Mr. Marmorstein, the Israeli spokesman, disputed that the seizure was illegal. The compound “does not enjoy any immunity,” he said in a statement, arguing that it was “carried out in accordance with both Israeli and international law.”
Despite the ban, UNRWA has continued some activities in parts of East Jerusalem, which Israel occupied in the 1967 Mideast war and later annexed, Mr. Fowler said. The agency operates at least two clinics, one of which has already received a cease-and-desist order from the Israeli government, he added.
Aaron Boxerman is a Times reporter covering Israel and Gaza. He is based in Jerusalem.
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