Israel withdraws from 1967 agreement recognising UNRWA

Move is latest in series of blows to UN agency, which is at the heart of operations to send aid to Gaza

UNRWA is crucial to efforts to move aid into the Gaza Strip as the war rages. AFP

Israel has notified the UN that it cancelled a 1967 agreement that recognises UNRWA, the agency for Palestinian refugees whose operations Israel has sharply curtailed in recent weeks.

The move puts the aid operation in ravaged Gaza, as well as educational and medical programmes across Palestine, at risk of collapse.

The agreement formed the legal basis for relations between Israel and UNRWA. Cancelling it is the latest in a series of moves led by Israel’s far-right government against the agency, a week after two laws passed in the Knesset that ban UNRWA from operating in areas where Israeli law applies and bars Israeli officials from working and co-ordinating with officials at the agency.

Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz instructed the ministry's director general Jacob Blitshtein to cancel the agreement, which he did in a letter sent to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres on Sunday. Mr Katz said in a statement released on Monday that UNRWA “is part of the problem in the Gaza Strip and not part of the solution”.

“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,” he added.

Israel has long accused UNRWA of failing to do enough to stamp out extremism in its ranks and school curriculum. But critics of the campaign against UNRWA say Israel is using these concerns as cover to sideline Palestinian refugees across the region.

Israeli anger at the organisation increased after the October 7 attacks, when Israel accused some members of the agency of taking part in the Hamas-led raids. UNRWA opened an investigation and dismissed nine staff in August.

However, UNRWA, with its local expertise and vast logistical network, is considered by the vast majority of the international community to be a key part of the Gaza aid operation and Israel’s effective ban was widely condemned, including by the country’s allies. The agency is also reeling from financial pressures, particularly after many key donor states withdrew funding after Israel's allegations, although most have since restored funding.

UNRWA has not yet responded to Israel’s withdrawal from the 1967 agreement, but it has joined the widespread condemnation of Israel’s actions against it. It comes as the country once again intensifies military operations in the most vulnerable areas of Gaza and as the occupied West Bank buckles under the pressure of settler violence, military raids and an economic crisis.

At the time the Knesset passed the bills, UNRWA commissioner general Philippe Lazzarini said on X that “as we look into the faces of children in Gaza, some of whom we know will die tomorrow, the rules-based international order is crumbling”.

“I urge member states to take action to support UNRWA commensurate with the gravity of the situation and risks," he added.

Saul Takahashi, professor of human rights and peace studies at Osaka Jogakuin University in Japan, told The National that Israel’s attack on UNRWA was “an accumulation of decades and decades of impunity that Israel has enjoyed”.

"We have this very unprecedented situation where we have a UN member state which is thumbing its nose at the UN, at international law in general and the entire international system," he added.