UN Agency for Palestinians Readies to Shutter Operations in East Jerusalem After Israeli Ban 

Women enter an United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) Jerusalem Health Center in Jerusalem's Old City, January 27, 2025, (Reuters)
Women enter an United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) Jerusalem Health Center in Jerusalem's Old City, January 27, 2025, (Reuters)
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UN Agency for Palestinians Readies to Shutter Operations in East Jerusalem After Israeli Ban 

Women enter an United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) Jerusalem Health Center in Jerusalem's Old City, January 27, 2025, (Reuters)
Women enter an United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) Jerusalem Health Center in Jerusalem's Old City, January 27, 2025, (Reuters)

Tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem were set to lose education, healthcare and other services provided by UN agency UNRWA as an Israeli ban on the organization takes effect on Thursday.

Israel's government ordered UNRWA to vacate its East Jerusalem compound and cease operations under a law passed last year outlawing the agency and prohibiting Israeli authorities from having contact with it.

At UNRWA's offices in East Jerusalem's Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, workers were packing boxes and loading portable buildings onto a truck on Monday.

"It's an unacceptable decision," said Jonathan Fowler, a spokesperson for UNRWA, formally titled the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East.

"The people that we serve ... we are not able to tell them what is going to happen to our services as of the end of this week."

Israel has not announced provisions for replacing UNRWA's activities, and the Israeli prime minister's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

UNRWA has for decades run schools and clinics in East Jerusalem, the eastern part of the city that Israel has occupied since a 1967 war, for tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees who have no nationality.

"We have everything here for us. When I heard that it will close, I was very sad because here is a place for people in need and for people who don’t have money to pay for medication," refugee Sara Saeed said at the UNRWA medical center in Jerusalem's Old City.

Medical center Director Hamza Al Jibrini said the facility serves 30,000 refugees. Among them are patients with diabetes and high blood pressure, pregnant women and children who receive vaccinations, said head of nursing Manal AlKhayat.

"Where they will go?" she asked.

Israel's ban only directly covers Israeli territory, which Israel considers East Jerusalem to be. UNRWA also operates in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, but it was unclear how the law will affect UNRWA's work there.

ISRAEL CLAIMS BIAS

UNRWA was established some 75 years ago, serving around 750,000 Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war at the time of the creation of the state of Israel.

Its sprawling headquarters are in a prime position not far from Jerusalem's Old City, which is home to sites holy to Christians, Jews and Muslims. The agency has long been a thorn in the eye of Israeli governments that considered the agency fundamentally hostile to Israel.

Israel says UNRWA's continued existence decades after the 1948 war has consolidated the refugee status of generations of Palestinians, who now number in the millions, and has frozen the conflict in place.

Israel regularly accuses the agency of anti-Israel bias and has also claimed its staff includes members of Hamas, the Palestinian group that launched the deadly cross-border raid on Israel on Oct 7, 2023. Israel calls for UNRWA's responsibilities to be taken over by other UN bodies such as its main refugee agency.

The UN rejects accusations of bias and says that UNRWA's expertise is irreplaceable, particularly in Gaza.

A UN investigation found that nine UNRWA staff may have been involved in the Hamas attack. The agency fired them but said Israel had not provided evidence of more widespread involvement by its staff. UNRWA employs around 30,000 people in the region and some 13,000 in the Gaza Strip.

More than 200 UNRWA staff have been killed in Gaza, the agency says, since the Gaza war started. Around 1,200 Israelis and foreigners were killed in the Oct. 7, 2023 attack and another 250 were taken hostage into Gaza, Israel says.

Over 47,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since Israel's military launched a retaliatory offensive, according to Gaza's health ministry.



Hamas Says It Is Investigating Possible Error over Hostage Body

 20 February 2025, Palestinian Territories, Khan Younis: Palestinian Hamas members carry one of the four coffins during the handover of the bodies of four Israeli hostages, killed in the Israeli war on Gaza, to the Red Cross in Khan Younis. (dpa)
20 February 2025, Palestinian Territories, Khan Younis: Palestinian Hamas members carry one of the four coffins during the handover of the bodies of four Israeli hostages, killed in the Israeli war on Gaza, to the Red Cross in Khan Younis. (dpa)
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Hamas Says It Is Investigating Possible Error over Hostage Body

 20 February 2025, Palestinian Territories, Khan Younis: Palestinian Hamas members carry one of the four coffins during the handover of the bodies of four Israeli hostages, killed in the Israeli war on Gaza, to the Red Cross in Khan Younis. (dpa)
20 February 2025, Palestinian Territories, Khan Younis: Palestinian Hamas members carry one of the four coffins during the handover of the bodies of four Israeli hostages, killed in the Israeli war on Gaza, to the Red Cross in Khan Younis. (dpa)

Hamas said on Friday it was investigating a possible error in identifying human remains handed to Israel under a ceasefire deal as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatened retaliation for failing to release the body of hostage Shiri Bibas.

Hamas was due to hand over the bodies of Shiri Bibas and her two sons Kfir and Ariel on Thursday, along with the remains of a fourth hostage under the ceasefire deal that has halted fighting in Gaza since last month.

Four bodies were delivered and the identities of the Bibas boys and the other hostage, Oded Lifshitz, were confirmed.

But Israeli specialists said the fourth body was that of an unidentified woman and not Bibas, who was kidnapped along with her sons and her husband, Yarden, during the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.

Basem Naim, a member of the Hamas political bureau, said "unfortunate mistakes" could occur, especially as Israeli bombing had mixed the bodies of Israeli hostages and Palestinians, thousands of whom were still buried in the rubble.

"We confirm that it is not in our values or our interest to keep any bodies or not to abide by the covenants and agreements that we sign," he said in a statement.

Hamas said separately that it would investigate the Israeli assertions and announce the results.

The failure to hand over the body and the staged public handover of the four coffins on Thursday, caused outrage in Israel and drew a threat of retaliation from Netanyahu.

"We will act with determination to bring Shiri home along with all our hostages - both living and dead - and ensure Hamas pays the full price for this cruel and evil violation of the agreement," he said in a video statement, accusing Hamas of acting "in an unspeakably cynical manner" by placing the body of a Gaza woman in the coffin instead of Bibas.

Hamas said in November 2023 that the children and their mother had been killed in an Israeli air strike and Ismail Al-Thawabta, director of the Hamas-run Gaza government media office, said Netanyahu "bears full responsibility for killing her and her children."

But the Israeli military said intelligence assessments and forensic analysis of the bodies of the Bibas children indicated that they were deliberately killed by their captors. Chief military spokesperson Daniel Hagari said the boys were killed by the militants "with their bare hands", but gave no details.

Netanyahu gave no details of a possible Israeli response, but the incident underscored the fragility of the ceasefire agreement reached with US backing and with the help of Qatari and Egyptian mediators last month.

SATURDAY EXCHANGE

Six living hostages are due for release on Saturday in exchange for 602 Palestinian prisoners and detainees, according to Hamas, and the start of negotiations for a second phase of the ceasefire is expected in the coming days.

"Hamas must return the hostages as agreed in the ceasefire- the living and the deceased," Israeli military spokesperson Nadav Shoshani said in a statement on social media platform X. "They have to bring Shiri back, and they have to release the 6 living hostages expected tomorrow."

Netanyahu's office confirmed it had been officially informed of the names of the six hostages to be released, which Hamas sources said was expected at around 8.30 a.m. (0630 GMT).

As the tension over the Gaza ceasefire rose, Netanyahu ordered the Israeli military to intensify operations in another Palestinian territory, the occupied West Bank, after a number of explosions blew up buses standing empty in their depots near Tel Aviv.

No casualties were reported but the explosions were a reminder of the campaign of suicide attacks on public transport that killed hundreds of Israeli civilians during the Second Intifada in the early 2000s.

'THEY MAKE A JOKE OF US'

Both sides have repeatedly accused the other of ceasefire violations, with Hamas threatening to delay the release of hostages over what it said was Israel's refusal to allow housing materials and other aid into Gaza, a charge Israel denied.

"It's like they make a joke of us," said 75-year-old Ilana Caspi. "We are so in grief and this is even more, it's like you make a punch again, another one and another one, it's really terrible."

The Red Cross told Reuters it was "concerned and unsatisfied" by the fact that the handover of the bodies had not been conducted privately and in a dignified manner.

Despite the outrage over Shiri Bibas, there was no indication that Israel would not take part in talks over a second phase of the ceasefire deal.

The Israel Hayom newspaper reported that Israeli negotiators were considering seeking an extension of the 42-day ceasefire, to delay moving to a second phase, which would involve talks over hard-to-resolve issues including an end to the war and the future of Hamas in Gaza.