UNRWA Vows to Help Palestinians Despite Israeli Ban, Deadly Attacks
Palestinian Territories — Israel has banned the United Nations agency mandated to support Palestinian refugees and designated it a terrorist organization. The United Nations UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) has vowed to continue its humanitarian work until unable to do so, despite the ban and having at least 258 staff members killed by Israel and over 650 attacks on their buildings.
In October 2024, Israel passed legislation banning UNRWA. The new law went into effect on January 30, 2025, and prohibits UNRWA from operating in Gaza, the occupied West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem. Amnesty International said the ban criminalizes humanitarian aid. UNRWA, which runs 120 shelters hosting 120,000 Palestinian refugees, noted that the ban is “as unlawful as the Israeli occupation itself.”
Following the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, nearly a million Palestinians were forced out of their ancestral homeland to make way for the western-backed Israeli state. In 1949, the United Nations created UNRWA and mandated that it directly support internally displaced Palestinian refugees. UNRWA provides direct aid, healthcare, education, housing and services to at least 2.5 million refugees in Palestinian territories and 3 million more in Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria.
✅ UNRWA directly manages schools, health centers, and humanitarian aid with 30,000+ staff, most of whom are #PalestineRefugees.
— UNRWA (@UNRWA) February 17, 2025
No other agency has the experience, reach, and trust of the community to operate at this scale in #Gaza and the wider region.
➡️ Learn more:… pic.twitter.com/Ge3sAMti1u
After the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attacks in which 1,139 Israelis were killed and 251 taken captive and brought into Gaza, UNRWA’s work became even more needed as Israel’s vengeful indiscriminate bombardment of Gaza was soon defined by openly genocidal acts of ethnic cleansing, killing civilians en masse, attacking infrastructure and healthcare, and weaponizing hunger and disease.
Israel alleged that 12 of UNWRA’s 30,000 staff were involved in the ‘Operation al-Aqsa Flood’ attacks. UNRWA’s internal investigation found that nine of its staffers “may have been involved” and all were terminated in August 2024.
Since October 2023, Israel has continued to attack UNRWA shelters and buildings across Gaza. At the end of 2024, after fifteen months of war on Gaza, UNRWA reported the following numbers:
- 258 UNRWA staff killed by Israel,
- At least 745 Palestinians killed and 2,200 injured by Israel in UNRWA shelters,
- Nearly 650 Israeli attacks on UNRWA buildings and facilities,
- Over two thirds of UNRWA buildings damaged or destroyed by Israel,
- At least 20 UNRWA staff in Israeli detention centers.
Unicorn Riot was present two months ago on December 16, 2024 for a deadly Israeli attack on an UNRWA-run school-turned-shelter in Khan Younis. At least 13 Palestinian civilians, mostly women and children, were killed and 48 were injured. See the video below, also featuring footage and interviews from an October attack on a shelter.
A witness to the December bombing said a man’s head was blown off and responders couldn’t find it. The school was clearly marked as an UNRWA school, he said, and no warnings were given before the deadly Israeli airstrike that hit the top floor where children, women and families were staying.
Israel has not only targeted UNRWA shelters, it’s routinely carried out air strikes and attacks on other humanitarian shelters across the besieged Gaza Strip killing tens of thousands of forcibly displaced Palestinians.
“There is an unspoken international alliance against the Palestinian people in Gaza,” said displaced Palestinian Abu Abdullah Abdul Ghani after a deadly October 2024 airstrike on Rafida School. At least 28 Gazans were killed and 54 were injured in the attack on the school-turned-shelter in Deir Al-Balah.
“They are ashamed to admit they are united in exterminating the Palestinian people in Gaza,” said Ghani.
#GAZA: At least 28 Palestinians were killed and 54 people were injured by an Israeli strike on a school housing displaced Palestinians in Deir Al-Balah today.
— UNICORN RIOT (@UR_Ninja) October 10, 2024
The Israeli Army did not warn the shelter before the attack.
For more from Palestine: https://t.co/9AN5wutQEU pic.twitter.com/E1fxvEuKU4
In May 2024, a survivor of an Israeli bombing on an UNRWA school in the Nuseirat refugee camp told Unicorn Riot that she had been sleeping when the bombing happened. She then had to evacuate around large flames and “charred” bodies. The school was being used as a shelter for forcibly displaced Gazans.
After decades of work in Palestinian territories, UNRWA provides a lifeline for many of the 5 million Palestinians they serve.
Recently, United States President Donald Trump made several public announcements normalizing the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Trump stated that the U.S. will own Gaza, displace all the Palestinians and develop the land into “the Riviera of the Middle East.”
Israel’s far-right Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed explicit support for Trump’s colonial ideations. Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) has already presented a plan for relocating “any Gaza resident who wants to emigrate to a third state.”
Faced with a block on their humanitarian efforts, UNRWA Chief Philippe Lazzarini vowed to continue their work and said, “What is clear is that the agency will stay and deliver its mandate until it is prevented from doing so.”
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