Palestinian Foreign Ministry: Targeting UNRWA Is an Israeli Crime and a Serious Escalation Requiring International Response and Sanctions

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates condemned the Israeli Knesset of the occupying force for advancing a dangerous bill aimed at legalizing the deprivation of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) of essential services in the occupied Palestinian territories, including East Jerusalem, and allowing the seizure of its offices and properties. This step constitutes a direct targeting of a humanitarian UN agency that enjoys international legal immunity and has global consensus on its vital and irreplaceable role. Moreover, Israel has no sovereignty over the Palestinian territories, including Jerusalem, nor over UNRWA.

The ministry warned in a statement today, Wednesday, that the ongoing targeting of UNRWA by the occupation does not only affect a humanitarian agency but represents a serious blow to the entire international humanitarian system. It is a deliberate attempt to criminalize humanitarian relief and to continue the war of extermination, displacement, and starvation. This situation places the international community before a true test of its credibility and commitment to protecting UN institutions and preventing their undermining or subjection to the will of force and the imposition of facts on the ground, which is a clear violation of the legal opinion on UNRWA issued by the International Court of Justice.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates called on the international community, including all countries, the United Nations, the Security Council, and member states, to take firm international stances and immediate, serious action to provide full political and legal protection for UNRWA. It emphasized the need to ensure the agency’s continued performance of its humanitarian duties without obstacles or threats, impose deterrent sanctions on Israel, the illegitimate occupying authority, hold it accountable for its grave and ongoing violations of international humanitarian law, prosecute all those involved in the legislative process criminalizing UNRWA, and cease dealings with the occupation government, the Knesset, and its members who incite against the Palestinian people and UN organizations—those entities that have made extermination, starvation, displacement, terrorism, and extremism their policy.