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Knesset bills passed by overwhelming majority prohibit UNRWA from operating within Israel and bar state authorities from maintaining contact with it.
By Ben Rappaport, United with Israel and Canaan Lidor, JNS
The Israeli Knesset on Monday passed in final readings two bills that bar UNRWA from operating inside Israeli territory, and prohibit state authorities from maintaining any contact with the agency.
One of the bills proposed to prohibit UNRWA from operating any mission, providing any service or conducting any activity, either directly or indirectly, within Israel’s sovereign territory. It passed with 92 MKs in support, 10 against.
“Since it has been proven to the State of Israel that UNRWA and its employees participate and are involved in terrorist activity against Israel, it is proposed to determine that Israel will work to stop all of the agency’s activities within its territory,” explanatory notes to the bill stated.
“The law that we have just passed is not just any law, it is a call for justice, a wake-up call that draws a clear red line – anyone who dares to aid terror and behaves like a terrorist has no right to exist in the State of Israel,” Likud MK Boaz Bismuth, one of the bill’s sponsors, said following its passage. “Not now and not in the future.”
“UNRWA is not an aid agency for refugees; it is an aid agency for Hamas,” Bismuth added. “UNRWA equal Hamas. Period.”
The second bill stated that Israel’s invitation to facilitate UNRWA’s operations, based on correspondence between Israel and the agency dating back to June 14, 1967, shortly after the Six Day War, will expire. It further stipulated that no Israeli government agencies or representatives may have any contact with UNWRA or a representative of the agency. The bill passed with 87 MKs supporting, 9 against.
“The wording of the law regulates the relations with this organization. In 1967, we invited them, and now we are bidding them farewell,” Yisrael Beitenu MK Yulia Melinovsky, a sponsor of the bill, said. “The elected officials are doing this with an overwhelming majority. It should have been done much sooner.”
According to Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Chairman MK Yuli Yoel Edelstein speaking to the Jerusalem Post, the first bill relates just to eastern Jerusalem, while the second one is broader, cancelling the invitation to UNRWA to operate in any area under Israeli control and barring Israeli officials from engaging with it.
In the wake of the Oct. 7 massacres in Israel, in which Hamas terrorists murdered some 1,200 people and abducted another 251, evidence surfaced about the complicity of UNRWA staff in those atrocities and other acts of terrorism.
For example, UNRWA worker Faisal Ali Mussalem al-Naami and a colleague were captured on video loading the body of Israeli Yonatan Samerano into a vehicle in Sderot.
According to Israel, over 450 terrorists belonging to terrorist organizations in Gaza, mainly Hamas, are also employed by UNRWA.
On Sept. 29, Hamas admitted that Fatah Sharif Abu al-Amin, chairman of UNRWA’s Teachers’ Association, was its commander in Lebanon. The agency had suspended Abu al-Amin in March, yet after his death denied knowing he was involved in terrorism.
UNRWA-employed Arabic teacher Yusef Zidan Suleiman al-Hawajara was recorded bragging to a friend on Oct. 7 about capturing a female hostage. (“We have female hostages, I captured one!” he says in a recording released by the IDF.)
In July, Israel’s foreign ministry published a list of names and ID numbers of 108 UNRWA employees Israel accuses of being Hamas terrorists. It was a “small fraction,” a Foreign Ministry official wrote, of a much larger list including hundreds of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad members who also worked for UNRWA. The wider list could not be released due to security considerations. Donate to vital charities that help protect Israeli citizens and inspire millions around the world to support Israel too! Now more than ever, Israel needs your help to fight and win the war -- including on the battlefield of public opinion. Antisemitism, anti-Israel bias and boycotts are out of control. Israel's enemies are inciting terror and violence against innocent Israelis and Jews around the world. Help us fight back!
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