In October 2024, Israel handed a legislation banning the company for Palestinian refugees in Israel and occupied East Jerusalem.
United Nations Secretary-Normal Antonio Guterres has warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he might take his nation to the Worldwide Court docket of Justice if it doesn’t repeal legal guidelines focusing on the UN Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) and return its seized belongings and property.
In a January 8 letter to Netanyahu, Guterres stated the UN can’t stay detached to “actions taken by Israel, that are in direct contravention of the obligations of Israel beneath worldwide legislation. They have to be reversed immediately.”
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Israel’s parliament handed a legislation in October 2024 banning UNRWA from working in Israel and prohibiting Israeli officers from having contact with the company. It then amended the legislation final month to ban electrical energy or water to UNRWA services.
Israeli authorities additionally seized UNRWA’s occupied East Jerusalem places of work final month. The UN considers East Jerusalem occupied by Israel. Israel considers all of Jerusalem to be a part of the nation.
Guterres stated that UNRWA is “an integral a part of the United Nations”, and highlighted that “Israel stays beneath an obligation to accord UNRWA and its personnel the privileges and immunities specified within the 1946 Conference on the Privileges and Immunities of the UN”.
The convention states that “the premises of the United Nations shall be inviolable”.
Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, dismissed Guterres’s letter to Netanyahu.
“We’re not fazed by the Secretary-Normal’s threats,” Danon stated in a publish on X on Tuesday.
“As an alternative of coping with the plain involvement of UNRWA personnel in terrorism, the Secretary-Normal chooses to threaten Israel. This isn’t defending worldwide legislation, that is defending a corporation marred by terrorism,” he added.
Israel has lengthy sought the dissolution of UNRWA, which was created by the UN Normal Meeting in 1949 following the conflict surrounding the founding of Israel. It has since supplied help, well being and training to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza, the occupied West Financial institution, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan.
Israel has alleged {that a} dozen of the company’s staff had been concerned within the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led assaults on southern Israel, wherein 1,139 folks had been killed, and about 240 had been taken into Gaza as captives.
In response to the assault, Israel launched a devastating genocidal conflict towards the Palestinian folks of Gaza, killing greater than 71,400, in accordance with Gaza’s well being authorities.
The UN has stated that 9 UNRWA employees who could have been concerned within the Hamas-led assault on Israel have been fired. A Hamas commander in Lebanon, killed in September by Israel, was additionally discovered to have had a UNRWA job.
The UN has additionally promised to analyze all accusations made towards UNRWA, and has repeatedly requested Israel for proof, which it says has not been supplied.
In accordance with a January 5 UN report, Israel’s conflict on Gaza has killed 382 UNRWA staff within the enclave, which is the very best variety of UN casualties for the reason that world physique was based in 1945. Some have been killed in Israel’s deliberate, repeated assaults on UNRWA hospitals and faculties, which shelter a couple of million displaced Palestinians in Gaza.
High UN officers and the UN Safety Council have described UNRWA because the spine of the help response in Gaza, the place Israel’s conflict has unleashed a humanitarian disaster.
In October 2025, the ICJ reiterated Israel’s obligation to make sure full respect for the privileges and immunities accorded to the UN, together with UNRWA and its personnel, and stated Israel ought to guarantee the essential wants of the civilian inhabitants in Gaza are met.
The ICJ opinion was requested by the 193-member UN Normal Meeting.
Advisory opinions of the ICJ, often known as the World Court docket, carry authorized and political weight, however they aren’t binding, and the courtroom has no enforcement energy.
