On 29 October 2024, the Israeli parliament voted by large majorities for two pieces of legislation: to ban Unrwa from working in Israel or those territories under its occupation, and to declare it a terrorist group and ban Israeli officials from any contact with it.
Unrwa is the United
Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees. It provides humanitarian
aid to thousands of Palestinian refugees. It was set up in 1950 just after the
founding of the State of Israel in Palestine, an act which led to a regional war
and the displacement of many Palestinians from their homes.
Unrwa is a United
Nations agency, the UN is of course based in New York, in the US. The UN was
instrumental in the founding of the state of Israel after WWII. The declaration
of a Jewish religious state, in contrast to a secular state, after displaced
Jews from WWII were generally not allowed to settle in western nations, including
the US, has triggered years of conflict, involving extreme violence and massacres,
chiefly between the Jewish state and Palestinian Arab Muslims, but also
involving neighbouring countries and Iran and the US. The region is important
strategically for its oil and as a trade route.
Potentially, by declaring that an agency of the UN is terrorist, this puts into question the whole of the UN and those who support it, thus the rest of the western world community represented in this body. It also makes UN staff in Palestine legitimate targets of the Israeli armed forces, in a situation where already over 200 have been killed in the current conflict since the attack from Gaza of October 7 2023 led by Hamas which killed many Israeli civilians.