By: Ali Huwaidi.[*]
(Exclusively for al-Zaytouna Centre).
Introduction
Following the 1948 Palestinian Nakbah (catastrophe), during which more than 800 thousand Palestinians were subjected to ethnic cleansing and expelled by Zionist forces, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) was established under UN General Assembly (UNGA) Resolution 302, adopted on 8/12/1949. Its establishment reflected the international community’s political and legal responsibility toward the Palestinian refugee issue. Moreover, the resolution’s preamble stipulated that UNRWA’s activities should not prejudice the fundamental rights of Palestinian refugees, including their right to return to the homes from which they were expelled, as well as their rights to compensation and the restoration of their property.
First: Gaps in UNRWA’s Operations
Since its establishment, UNRWA has been marked by four major structural gaps.
First, funding. To this day, UNRWA relies on voluntary rather than mandatory contributions from UN member states. This arrangement was initially justified by the assumption that the Agency would be temporary and would soon cease to exist following the return of Palestinian refugees to their homes. However, this funding model has left UNRWA vulnerable to shifts in government policies and changing geopolitical dynamics. For example, the US contributed approximately $360 million annually, or about one-third of the Agency’s budget. This funding was suspended during Donald Trump’s first presidency, restored under President Joe Biden, and cut again following Trump’s return to office. More broadly, many countries have significantly reduced their contributions in recent years.
Second, the geographic scope of refugee registration was limited to five designated areas: Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, the West Bank (WB), including occupied East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip (GS). Consequently, Palestinian refugees residing in Iraq, Egypt and other countries were excluded from UNRWA’s registration system.
Third, UNRWA has not provided physical protection to refugees. Rather, its protection role has largely been confined to humanitarian assistance through health, education and relief services, as well as periodic awareness and informational reports. Its legal protection has similarly been limited, primarily to legal advice, with UNRWA only rarely assigning lawyers to pursue cases involving refugees.
It is also important to note that the UN Conciliation Commission for Palestine (UNCCP), established pursuant to UNGA Resolution 194 on the right of return and comprising the US, France and Türkiye, initially addressed the legal, political and humanitarian protection of Palestinian refugees wherever they were located, including Palestinians displaced within Palestine during the 1948 Nakbah. However, the Commission’s role and functions were effectively suspended in the early 1950s, although it continues to submit an annual report to the UNGA each September.
Fourth, in coordination with host countries, UNRWA established the geographic boundaries of refugee camps (RCs), within which its facilities, including RC offices, clinics and schools, were located. Over the decades since the Nakbah, however, RC populations have increased by more than 400%, while the RCs’ boundaries have remained largely unchanged. Consequently, construction has increasingly become vertical, often without adequate engineering standards, exposing many homes to structural risks, compromising privacy, and exacerbating humanitarian hardship. Moreover, official authorities have generally restricted expansion beyond the RCs’ boundaries.
Israel and the US administration have sought, to varying degrees and through different means, to exploit these structural gaps in their efforts to target UNRWA.
Second: A Significant Decline in UNRWA Services
According to UNRWA, more than 6 million registered Palestinian refugees reside in 58 RCs across its five fields of operation: 12 in Lebanon, 8 in GS, 19 in the WB, 9 in Syria, and 10 in Jordan.
As of 2023, UNRWA operated 715 primary, intermediate and secondary schools across these five fields, serving approximately 600 thousand students annually. It also operated two vocational training centers: one in Qalandia in the WB, serving 750 students, and another in Siblin, Lebanon, serving 2,000 students. In addition, the Agency oversaw 140 health centers and a 65-bed hospital in Qalqilya in the northern WB. Its workforce totaled approximately 31 thousand employees.
However, declining funding has significantly constrained the Agency’s ability to maintain these services. In late 2025, then-Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini decided to dismiss 575 employees in GS after placing them on one year of unpaid leave. He also announced a reduction in weekly working hours from 37.5 to 30, effective February 2026, along with a 20% salary cut for local Palestinian staff, while international staff were exempted. In practical terms, this represented a 20% decline in the quality of services provided to Palestinian refugees.
Third: The Systematic Targeting of UNRWA
Israel’s targeting of UNRWA intensified in 2018, when Benjamin Netanyahu urged Trump to work toward dismantling the Agency, apparently viewing its continued existence as a tangible reminder of the Palestinian refugee crisis and Israel’s denial of their right of return, as affirmed by international law and UN resolution. Subsequently, Operation al-Aqsa Flood was used as a pretext to advance Netanyahu’s and Trump’s efforts to gradually dismantle UNRWA. Israel began making allegations, without substantiated evidence, that UNRWA staff had participated in Operation al-Aqsa Flood or were members of the resistance, and that the Agency’s facilities were being used by resistance fighters for military purposes. The Israeli Knesset subsequently passed legislation restricting dealings with UNRWA. Moreover, since the end of January 2025, Israeli authorities have denied international UNRWA staff visas and entry permits to GS, WB and Jerusalem.
The UN’s response to Israel’s grave violations against UNRWA has largely been limited to statements of condemnation and denunciation, without effective deterrent measures. Israeli forces, for example, raided UNRWA’s headquarters in Sheikh Jarrah, occupied East Jerusalem, and replaced the UN flag on the building’s roof with the Israeli flag. Israel subsequently destroyed the headquarters and seized the land that UNRWA had leased from the Jordanian government in 1952, before Israel’s occupation of East Jerusalem in 1967; consequently, Israel has no legal sovereignty over the property. Israel is now reportedly seeking to establish a war museum on the site, in a flagrant challenge to the UN system. Moreover, Israel closed six UNRWA schools in occupied East Jerusalem, in Shu‘fat, Silwan, Wadi al-Joz, and Sur Bahir, serving approximately 800 students. It also closed the Zawiya Clinic, known as the “Jerusalem Health Center,” and has sought to restructure Palestinian RCs in the northern WB by ending UNRWA operations in the Nur Shams, Jenin, and Tulkarm RCs and renaming them “neighborhoods,” thereby erasing a key marker of Palestinian refugeehood. In addition, Israel has killed 393 UNRWA staff members in GS and destroyed approximately 312 UNRWA facilities, some of which were subsequently used as military barracks, detention centers, and sites for interrogating and torturing Palestinians, despite the Agency’s UN protection and immunities. Thus, the continuation and protection of UNRWA ultimately depend on the balance of international power within the UN.
Fourth: Key Israeli and US Laws Targeting UNRWA
On 4/11/2024, the Israeli government formally notified the UN of its decision to terminate the Comay-Michelmore Agreement, which governed its relations with UNRWA. Signed on 14/6/1967 by Michael Comay, Political Adviser to Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Lawrence Michelmore, then UNRWA Commissioner-General, the agreement provided a framework for UNRWA to carry out its operations and protect its personnel in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.
Earlier, on 28/10/2024, the Knesset passed two laws restricting UNRWA’s operations in the occupied Palestinian territories. The first prohibits UNRWA from conducting activities, maintaining representative offices, providing services, or carrying out direct or indirect operations within Israel and occupied East Jerusalem, while also terminating the Comay-Michelmore Agreement. The second prohibits Israeli institutions and officials from engaging in any contact or dealings with the Agency or anyone acting on its behalf and revokes the diplomatic and legal privileges and immunities granted to UNRWA and its personnel.
As part of Israel’s broader efforts to undermine UNRWA’s operations, the Israeli Knesset approved a legal amendment on 29/12/2025 by a vote of 59–7. The amendment cuts off water and electricity supplies and bars the provision of essential services and communications to the Agency’s headquarters and offices in occupied Jerusalem. It builds on the two laws adopted on 28/10/2024 and followed an International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling issued about two months earlier, which held that Israel must allow UNRWA and other UN bodies to operate in the Palestinian territories.
The US administration has continued to pressure UNRWA under all three administrations: Trump’s first and second terms, as well as the intervening Biden administration. In May 2026, Republican Representative Mike Lawler led a letter signed by 93 Republican members of Congress urging President Trump to work toward dismantling UNRWA across its five fields of operation. In July 2026, Republican Representative Chris Smith and several other lawmakers introduced a bill to end US support and funding for UNRWA, without specifying a timeframe for lifting the ban. That same month, a bipartisan House bill was introduced calling for the termination of UNRWA’s mandate and the transfer of its relief functions to alternative nongovernmental organizations outside the UN framework.
Moreover, on 1/7/2026, the Board of Peace (BoP) in Gaza announced on X that “UNRWA has no place in the new Gaza.” Formally launched by Trump on 22/1/2026, the BoP’s position effectively disregards UNGA Resolution 302, which established UNRWA and placed its mandate under the authority of the UNGA. The decision could have far-reaching consequences, as it would leave more than 1.76 million Palestinian refugees registered with UNRWA in GS in need of water, food, medicine, shelter and other essential humanitarian assistance. At the same time, however, it could gradually weaken the Agency and ultimately facilitate efforts to undermine the right of return.
Conclusion
Israel’s efforts to abolish UNRWA seek to erase Palestinian refugees’ right to return to the homes from which they were expelled, evade responsibility for the ethnic cleansing committed against them, and prevent Palestinians from exercising their right to self-determination in their homeland. Thus, UNRWA remains a living witness to the Palestinian Nakbah.
Nevertheless, ending UNRWA’s operations would neither extinguish Palestinian refugees’ right of return nor remove the “refugee” issue from the international political agenda. The right of return is both an individual and collective right, is inalienable, and does not lapse with time. Moreover, it is protected by international law and UN resolutions, including Resolution 194, adopted a full year before UNRWA was established; Article 13 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which affirms every refugee’s right to return to their country, even after a prolonged period; Article 12 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which entered into force in March 1976; and Article 5 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, adopted in December 1969. Above all, however, this right is sustained by the will of more than 8 million Palestinian refugees, their people, and people around the world who support their cause.
On the other hand, UNRWA must be preserved and enabled to fulfill its mandate. At the same time, its mandate should be expanded to provide for stable mandatory funding, physical and legal protection, broader refugee registration beyond its five fields of operation, and expanded RC areas as temporary spaces where refugees can live in dignity until their return. Realistically, however, achieving these objectives requires a shift in the balance of power within the UN’s international political arena. This, in turn, calls for a long-term strategy centered on sustained progress and coordinated political, legal, media, diplomatic and popular action at the Palestinian, Arab, Islamic and international levels.
| Political Insights: A periodic series that provides brief and condensed political analyses and position assessments, issued by Al-Zaytouna Centre for Studies and Consultations. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Al-Zaytouna Centre. |
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