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Israel Notifies UN of End to Ties with Palestinian Relief Agency

Volunteers distribute sacks of flour at a United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) aid distribution center in Deir el-Balah on November 4, 2024, amid the ongoing war between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas. (Photo by Eyad BABA / AFP)
Volunteers distribute sacks of flour at a United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) aid distribution center in Deir el-Balah on November 4, 2024, amid the ongoing war between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas. (Photo by Eyad BABA / AFP)
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Israel Notifies UN of End to Ties with Palestinian Relief Agency

Volunteers distribute sacks of flour at a United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) aid distribution center in Deir el-Balah on November 4, 2024, amid the ongoing war between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas. (Photo by Eyad BABA / AFP)
Volunteers distribute sacks of flour at a United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) aid distribution center in Deir el-Balah on November 4, 2024, amid the ongoing war between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas. (Photo by Eyad BABA / AFP)

Israel has officially notified the United Nations that it was cancelling the agreement that regulated its relations with the UN relief organization for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) since 1967, the Israeli foreign ministry said on Monday.

Israel's parliament last week passed legislation banning UNRWA from operating in Israel and stopping Israeli authorities from cooperating with the organization, which has said the ban will deepen the suffering of Palestinians, especially in Gaza.

Since the start of the Gaza war, Israel has said that UNRWA has been infiltrated by the Palestinian armed group Hamas in Gaza, accusing some of its staff of taking part in the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel.

Following an investigation by the UN oversight office, the United Nations said in August that nine UNRWA staff may have been involved in the Oct. 7 attack, and had been fired. Later, a Hamas commander in Lebanon - killed last month in an Israeli strike - was found to have had an UNRWA job.

Israel's UN Ambassador Danny Danon said in a statement that despite the overwhelming evidence "we submitted to the UN highlighting how Hamas infiltrated UNRWA, the UN did nothing to address this reality".

The legislation, which does not take effect for another three months, has prompted international concern, with the UN Security Council warning against attempts to dismantle UNRWA.

UNRWA director of communications Juliette Touma said the Israeli law had so far had no impact on UNRWA assistance in Gaza and the West Bank including East Jerusalem. She said the onus was on UN member states to find a way to get Israel not to implement the law, calling it "a race against time".

The law does not directly outlaw UNRWA's operations in the West Bank and Gaza, both considered by international law to be outside the state of Israel but under Israeli occupation. But it will severely impact its ability to work in those areas.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called for UNRWA to be shut down, saying it seeks to perpetuate the issue of Palestinian refugees.

The agency was established in 1949 following the war surrounding the founding of Israel, when 700,000 Palestinians fled or were driven from their homes.

It provides aid, health and education to 5.9 million descendants of those refugees in Gaza, the West Bank and in neighboring Arab countries.

Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz ordered his ministry to notify the United Nations of the cancellation of the agreement, the foreign ministry said.

Katz said the UN "was presented with countless pieces of evidence that Hamas operatives are employed by UNRWA and about the use of UNRWA facilities for terrorist purposes yet nothing was done about this".

Asked for comment, Touma said that in addition to the UN oversight office's investigation, UNRWA received one formal accusation directly from Israeli authorities, alleging 100 of its staff were members of Palestinian armed groups.

UNRWA sought information and cooperation from Israel about the allegations and had not received a response, she said.

The Israeli military had also made accusations in the media alleging the use of UNRWA facilities by armed groups. UNRWA had repeatedly condemned the alleged use of its facilities by groups including Hamas and other parties to the conflict and called for accountability, she said. 

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Arab World

In Lebanon, a Family's Memories are Detonated Along With Their Village

Destroyed buildings lie in ruin on Lebanon’s side of the border with Israel, amid ongoing hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, as seen from Mount Addir, northern Israel, November 4, 2024. REUTERS/Violeta Santos Moura
Destroyed buildings lie in ruin on Lebanon’s side of the border with Israel, amid ongoing hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, as seen from Mount Addir, northern Israel, November 4, 2024. REUTERS/Violeta Santos Moura
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In Lebanon, a Family's Memories are Detonated Along With Their Village

Destroyed buildings lie in ruin on Lebanon’s side of the border with Israel, amid ongoing hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, as seen from Mount Addir, northern Israel, November 4, 2024. REUTERS/Violeta Santos Moura
Destroyed buildings lie in ruin on Lebanon’s side of the border with Israel, amid ongoing hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, as seen from Mount Addir, northern Israel, November 4, 2024. REUTERS/Violeta Santos Moura

Ayman Jaber’s memories are rooted in every corner of Mhaibib, the village in southern Lebanon he refers to as his “habibti,” the Arabic word for “beloved.” The root of the village’s name means “the lover” or “the beloved.”
Reminiscing about his childhood sweetheart, the 45-year-old avionics technician talks about how the young pair would meet in a courtyard near his uncle's house, The Associated Press said.
“I used to wait for her there to see her,” Jaber recalls with a smile. "Half of the village knew about us.”
The fond memory contrasts sharply with recent images of his hometown.
Mhaibib, perched on a hill close to the Israeli border, was leveled by a series of explosions on Oct. 16. The Israeli army released a video showing blasts ripping through the village in the Marjayoun province, razing dozens of homes to dust.
The scene has been repeated in villages across southern Lebanon since Israel launched its invasion a month ago with the stated goal of pushing Hezbollah militants back from the border. On Oct. 26, massive explosions in and around Odaisseh sparked an earthquake alert in northern Israel.
Israel says it wants to destroy a massive network of Hezbollah tunnels in the border area. But for the people who have been displaced, the attacks are also destroying a lifetime of memories.
Mhaibib had endured sporadic targeting since Hezbollah and Israeli forces began exchanging fire on Oct. 8 last year.
Jaber was living in Aramoun, just south of Beirut, before the war, and the rest of his family evacuated from Mhaibib after the border skirmishes ignited. Some of them left their possessions behind and sought refuge in Syria. Jaber's father and two sisters, Zeinab and Fatima, moved in with him.
In the living room of their temporary home, the siblings sip Arabic coffee while their father chain-smokes.
“My father breaks my heart. He is 70 years old, frail and has been waiting for over a year to return to Mhaibib,” Zeinab said. “He left his five cows there. He keeps asking, ‘Do you think they’re still alive?’”
Mhaibib was a close-knit rural village, with about 70 historic stone homes lining its narrow streets. Families grew tobacco, wheat, mulukhiyah (jute mallow) and olives, planting them each spring and waking before dawn in the summer to harvest the crops.
Hisham Younes, who runs the environmental organization Green Southerners, says generations of southerners admired Mhaibib for its one-or two-story stone homes, some built by Jaber’s grandfather and his friends.
“Detonating an entire village is a form of collective punishment and war crime. What do they gain from destroying shrines, churches and old homes?” Younes asks.
Abdelmoe’m Shucair, the mayor of neighboring Mays el Jabal, told the Associated Press that the last few dozen families living in Mhaibib fled before the Israeli destruction began, as had residents of surrounding villages.
Jaber's sisters attended school in Mays al-Jabal. That school was also destroyed in a series of massive explosions.
After finishing her studies in Beirut, Zeinab worked in a pharmacy in the neighboring village of Blida. That pharmacy, too, is gone after the Israeli military detonated part of that village. Israeli forces even bulldozed their village cemetery where generations of family members are buried.
“I don’t belong to any political group,” Zeinab says. “Why did my home, my life, have to be taken from me?”
She says she can't bring herself to watch the video of her village’s destruction. “When my brother played it, I ran from the room.”
To process what’s happening, Fatima says she closes her eyes and takes herself back to Mhaibib. She sees the sun setting, vividly painting the sky stretching over their family gatherings on the upstairs patio, framed by their mother’s flowers.
The family painstakingly expanded their home over a decade.
“It took us 10 years to add just one room,” Fatima said. “First, my dad laid the flooring, then the walls, the roof and the glass windows. My mom sold a year’s worth of homemade preserves to furnish it.” She paused. “And it was gone in an instant.”
In the midst of war, Zeinab married quietly. Now she’s six months pregnant. She had hoped to be back in Mhaibib in time for the delivery.
Her brother was born when Mhaibib and other villages in southern Lebanon were under Israeli occupation. Jaber remembers traveling from Beirut to Mhaibib, passing through Israeli checkpoints and a final crossing before entering the village.
“There were security checks and interrogations. The process used to take a full or half a day,” he says. And inside the village, they always felt like they were “under surveillance.”
His family also fled the village during the war with Israel in 2006, and when they returned they found their homes vandalized but still standing. An uncle and a grandmother were among those killed in the 34-day conflict, but a loquat tree the matriarch had planted next to their home endured.
This time, there is no home to return to and even the loquat tree is gone.
Jaber worries Israel will again set up a permanent presence in southern Lebanon and that he won't be able to reconstruct the home he built over the last six years for himself, his wife and their two sons.
“When this war ends, we’ll go back,” Ayman says quietly. “We’ll pitch tents if we have to and stay until we rebuild our houses.”