Urgent appeal About the ban on UNRWA operations
Letter to European countries and members of the European/UK and Swiss Parliaments
Geneva, January 10, 2025
Subject : Israel bans UNRWA operations
In October 2024, the Israeli Knesset ultimately approved the ban on UNRWA activities in the occupied Palestinian territories. The Israeli ban decision will come into effect a few days from today, i.e. before the end of January of this year.
The Israeli ban decision means that the agency will not be able to carry out its work in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and Jerusalem and that its offices and any bank accounts it has inside Israel will be closed, preventing it from providing its basic services to millions of Palestinian refugees in Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
UNRWA is “indispensable” because its activities keep the people “alive” in the Gaza Strip, which has been destroyed by the genocidal war.” It represents the backbone of humanitarian work in the Palestinian territories, especially in the Gaza Strip.
For years, Israel has been striving by all means possible, diplomatic and political, to end the work of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). After October 7, 2023, Israel requested again the termination of UNRWA, and asked the USA and Western countries to stop their funding for UNRWA after the Israeli government claimed that employees working for the agency were part of the attacks of October 7, 2023, without providing any evidence.
UNRWA has humanitarian and development missions, which have been repeatedly renewed by the United Nations General Assembly, in order to provide assistance and protection to Palestinian refugees until they return to their homes from which they were displaced. Its activities include basic education, health care, social services and relief, and assistance in emergency situations, including in cases of armed conflict.
For more than 7 decades, UNRWA has remained the main sponsor of Palestinian refugees, providing them with educational, health and social services.
UNRWA is indispensable and irreplaceable for the purposes of human and economic development of the Palestinian people. The United Nations General Assembly is the only body that has the authority to supervise, direct or modify UNRWA’s mandate. Neither Israel nor any other state has any authority under any circumstances to interfere with UNRWA, its mandate or its operations.
We call upon you to intervene urgently to stop the Israeli decision to ban the operations of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) before a humanitarian catastrophe occurs in the occupied Palestinian territories, especially in the besieged and devastated Gaza Strip due to the genocidal war.
Best regards
International Jurists Union / Geneva office email: ijugeneva@bluewin.ch
Geneva Centre for Democracy & Human Rights email: info@gcdhr.org
Geneva Council for International Affairs and Development email: admin@gciad.ch