By criminalising Unrwa, Israel has translated its genocidal intent into national law and officially stopped recognising UN values. It must be expelled from the family of nations
Nicola Perugini
Israel’s unauthenticated and uncorroborated allegations, to which the agency has responded with precautionary suspensions, is that Unrwa’s staff participated in the attacks of 7 October.
Two new laws have been approved by the Knesset, which will come into effect in 90 days, and which criminalise and de-facto expel the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.
Unrwa’s commissioner-general, Philippe Lazzarini, has warned that the Knesset vote "opposes the UN Charter and violates the State of Israel’s obligations under international law".
In a letter to the president of the UN General Assembly, Lazzarini added that "under such physical, political and operational attack" Unrwa’s fulfilling of its mandate will become impossible without the intervention of the General Assembly.
One of the two bills approved by the Knesset, with a 92-10 majority, legislates that Unrwa will no “longer operate any institution, provide any service, or conduct any activity, whether directly or indirectly” within the territory controlled by Israel.
This includes the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, where almost three million Palestinians are registered as refugees, and hundreds of thousands are beneficiaries of life-sustaining services.
The second bill abrogates the 1967 agreement between the United Nations and Israel, which allowed Unrwa to extend its services within the occupied Palestinian territories, with Israel committing to facilitating the agency’s work.
This measure also strips Unrwa of its diplomatic immunity.
Attacks on Unrwa have multiplied during the last decades, reaching unprecedented intensity after 7 October, with more than 230 staff killed in Israeli strikes.
The ultimate objective of Israel’s campaigns to erase Unrwa has always been to erase the international legal protections in which the United Nations has enshrined the Palestinian right of return to the lands from which they have been expelled.
Cancelling Unrwa’s presence is about normalising Israel’s settler-colonial conquest of Palestinian land through expulsion.
To make this message clear, in a highly symbolic move, two weeks before Monday's Knesset vote, Israel confiscated illegally occupied Palestinian lands on which the Unrwa headquarters is located. In place of the Unrwa headquarters, Israel is going to build a colony hosting 1,400 settlement units.
Intensifying the genocide
The history and present of Palestinian dispossession are intertwined in Israel’s attempt to eradicate Unrwa. Expelling Unrwa is also about intensifying the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Expelling Unrwa is also about intensifying the ongoing genocide in Gaza
Since October 2023, as UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food Michael Fakhri has demonstrated in his reports, Israel has used starvation “to displace, kill, annihilate people […] as an attempt to erase Palestinians from history and their land in order for Israel to fully annex Palestinian territory”.
In more than a year of Israel’s attempts to impose this regime of settler-colonial terror, Unrwa has been at the forefront of the efforts to keep the Palestinian people alive, providing food, medical assistance and shelter for the displaced Palestinian population in Gaza.
That is why, when in March 2024, South Africa submitted an urgent request to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to issue new provisional measures to protect the Palestinian people in Gaza from the risk of genocide, it denounced Israel’s unsubstantiated international campaign to defund Unrwa as an effort to intensify its starvation regime and a violation of the Genocide Convention.
To which the ICJ responded at the end of the same month, issuing an order for Israel to cooperate with Unrwa and other UN agencies and ensure “the unhindered provision at scale by all concerned of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance, including food, water, electricity, fuel, shelter, clothing, hygiene and sanitation requirements”.
Instead of complying with the ICJ order, Israel intensified its legislative efforts to outlaw Unrwa, while simultaneously attacking Unrwa militarily.
Genocidal intent
In fact, the legislative and military efforts should be conceived as part of the same process of violation of the Genocide Convention.
While Israel’s parliament was advancing the two different bills approved on 28 October and its legislative effort to outlaw Unrwa, its military has worked systematically to annihilate Unrwa’s staff, killing 233 of them as of 25 October.
As part of the genocidal campaign, 70 percent of Unrwa’s schools have been targeted, as well as its distribution and medical centres.
The laws approved by the Knesset on 28 October are further evidence of Israel’s genocidal intent.
In effect, what the laws ultimately do is to translate Israel’s genocidal intent into national law. It is not a matter of individuals with high-rank positions, or chains of command explicitly articulating and implementing the intent to destroy Palestinians as a group.
With the new laws, it is the supreme “democratic” organ governing the state of Israel which has voted in favour of directly contributing to settler-colonial expansion and genocide by eradicating the main institution that keeps Gaza Palestinians alive.
Israel is at war with the United Nations as an institution.
It kills and bombards its humanitarian staff in Gaza. It bombards, bulldozes and uses gas against UN peacekeepers in Lebanon. It tries to dismantle its refugee agencies. It ignores the orders of the UN's highest judicial body, choosing to put the Genocide Convention at risk.
It bans its secretary general from visiting the country, treating him as a threat. It orchestrates diplomatic campaigns against UN functionaries and special rapporteurs who call for an end to the genocide and justice in Palestine. Its prime minister frames the entire UN as a “house of darkness” and a "swamp of antisemitic bile".
It has become clear that Israel has officially stopped recognising itself in UN values and institutions.
The natural countermeasure for the UN to take is it stop recognising Israel as a legitimate member of the family of nations, and revoke its UN membership until it stops its genocide and dismantles its regime of settler-colonial apartheid.
Back in 1974 the General Assembly voted to suspend South Africa from participation in its work due to international opposition to its apartheid policies.
It worked with South Africa, it will work with Israel.
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