With UNRWA Fate Unclear, UN and Israel Argue over Who’s Responsible for Palestinians

Palestinians, including children, hold metal pots and pans as they gather to receive food cooked by a charity kitchen, in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, 10 January 2025. (EPA)
Palestinians, including children, hold metal pots and pans as they gather to receive food cooked by a charity kitchen, in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, 10 January 2025. (EPA)
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With UNRWA Fate Unclear, UN and Israel Argue over Who’s Responsible for Palestinians

Palestinians, including children, hold metal pots and pans as they gather to receive food cooked by a charity kitchen, in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, 10 January 2025. (EPA)
Palestinians, including children, hold metal pots and pans as they gather to receive food cooked by a charity kitchen, in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, 10 January 2025. (EPA)

The United Nations and Israel are arguing over who must fill the gap if the UN Palestinian relief agency UNRWA stops working in the Gaza Strip and West Bank later this month when an Israeli law comes into force.

UNRWA still operates in the Palestinian territories, but it is unclear what awaits the nearly 75-year-old agency when the law banning its operation on Israeli land and contact with Israeli authorities takes effect.

The UN and Israel have been engaged in tit-for-tat letter writing since the law on UNRWA was passed in late October. Shortly after, the UN told Israel it was not the world body's responsibility to replace UNRWA in the Palestinian territory - Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

In a letter to the UN General Assembly and Security Council late on Thursday, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said if UNRWA was forced to stop operating then Israel "would be left to ensure that the range of services and assistance which UNRWA has been providing are provided" in accordance with its obligations under international law.

Guterres wrote that while other UN agencies were prepared to continue providing services and assistance to the Palestinians - to the extent they can - that "must not be viewed as releasing Israel from its obligations."

The United Nations views Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, as Israeli-occupied territory. International law requires an occupying power to agree to and facilitate relief programs and ensure food, medical care, hygiene and public-health standards.

In a Dec. 18 letter to the world body, Israel's UN Ambassador Danny Danon said the new legislation "does not in any way undermine Israel's steadfast commitment to international law." He also rejected UN claims that Israel would be responsible for filling any gap left by UNRWA.

He wrote that Israel does not exercise effective control over Gaza and therefore is not an occupying power, adding that the law of military occupation also does not apply. He said that in the West Bank the responsibility of the Palestinian Authority for civilian affairs "must not be overlooked."

"In Jerusalem, all residents are entitled to government and municipal services under Israeli law," said Danon, adding that included health and education services. Israel annexed East Jerusalem in a move not recognized abroad.

HEALTH, EDUCATION AT RISK

Israel has long been critical of UNRWA. It says UNRWA staff took part in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel. The UN has said nine UNRWA staff may have been involved and were fired. A Hamas commander in Lebanon - killed in September by Israel - was also found to have had an UNRWA job.

The United States has said its ally Israel must ensure the new law does not further impede aid deliveries and critical services, including by UNRWA, in Gaza, which has been engulfed in a humanitarian crisis during the war between Israel and Palestinian Hamas group.

But it has also questioned UN contingency planning.

State Department officials met this week with the transition team of incoming US President Donald Trump - who takes office on Jan. 20 - and raised concerns about how the crisis in Gaza could deepen once the UNRWA law is implemented, said a US official.

UNRWA, established by the UN General Assembly, provides aid, health and education services to millions of Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and neighboring Arab countries - Syria, Lebanon and Jordan.

Guterres said UNRWA's unique role could not be replaced. UN officials say it is the health, education and social services UNRWA provides in the Palestinian territory that would suffer most as other agencies cannot match its ability to deliver such help.

Danon argued that "replacing UNRWA with relief schemes that will adequately provide essential assistance to Palestinian civilians is not at all impossible," citing the aid operation in Gaza where he said other UN agencies were equipped to provide the necessary response "as they do elsewhere in the world."

Other agencies working in Gaza and the West Bank include the children's organization UNICEF, the World Food Program, the World Health Organization, and the UN Development Program. But top UN officials and the Security Council describe UNRWA as the backbone of the current humanitarian operation in Gaza.

Israel launched an assault on Hamas in Gaza after the fighters killed 1,200 people in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and took some 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

More than 46,000 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to Palestinian health officials. Much of the enclave has been laid waste and most of the 2.3 million people have been displaced multiple times. Food experts warn of a looming famine.



Israeli Soldier Sentenced to 7 Months in Jail for Abusing Palestinian Detainees

An Israeli soldier walks across an agricultural field at the entrance of the Tulkarem refugee camp in Tulkarem on February 5, 2025, as the army conducts a raid in the occupied West Bank city. (Photo by Zain JAAFAR / AFP)
An Israeli soldier walks across an agricultural field at the entrance of the Tulkarem refugee camp in Tulkarem on February 5, 2025, as the army conducts a raid in the occupied West Bank city. (Photo by Zain JAAFAR / AFP)
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Israeli Soldier Sentenced to 7 Months in Jail for Abusing Palestinian Detainees

An Israeli soldier walks across an agricultural field at the entrance of the Tulkarem refugee camp in Tulkarem on February 5, 2025, as the army conducts a raid in the occupied West Bank city. (Photo by Zain JAAFAR / AFP)
An Israeli soldier walks across an agricultural field at the entrance of the Tulkarem refugee camp in Tulkarem on February 5, 2025, as the army conducts a raid in the occupied West Bank city. (Photo by Zain JAAFAR / AFP)

An Israeli soldier who was found to have struck Palestinian detainees while they were restrained and blindfolded has been sentenced to seven months in jail by an Israeli military court.
The Israeli military on Thursday announced the court had accepted a plea agreement with the soldier, a reservist who it said admitted to having "severely abused" Palestinian detainees at the Sde Teiman military detention centre near the border with the Gaza Strip.
"The defendant was convicted of several incidents in which he struck detainees with his fists and his weapon while they were bound and blindfolded," the military said. It did not name the soldier or detail the charges he was convicted of, Reuters reported.
The military statement did not identify where the Palestinian detainees were from, why they had been detained or whether they had since been charged or convicted of crimes or released from detention.
In addition to seven months imprisonment, the court handed the soldier a suspended sentence and demoted him to the rank of private. The military said the soldier had served as a security guard at the detention center but did not say what rank he had held. Israeli media reported the soldier's jail sentence included time that he had already spent in detention.
The military court found that other masked soldiers had participated in the abuse but that their identities had not been determined, the military said, without saying how many.
The convicted soldier had beaten the detainees in front of other soldiers, some of whom had told him to stop, the military said, adding that a recording of the abuse had been found on the mobile phone of the convicted soldier.
The military has been investigating allegations that soldiers had abused Palestinians from Gaza held in military detention since the start of the war in October 2023. The military on Thursday did not say whether investigations were still ongoing or if any other soldiers had been charged.
In July last year, right-wing Israeli protesters broke into Sde Teiman detention facility and another Israeli military compound after investigators arrived to question soldiers about suspected abuse.