Is There a Legal Basis for Israel’s UNRWA Ban?

In late January 2025, Israel is expected to implement its ban on the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), the only UN relief agency dedicated exclusively to Palestinian refugees.1

“The minister . . . mandated the Director of the Lands Authority to stop all contracts of the ILA with UNRWA and to order us to evacuate all lands leased to us by the State of Israel,” Jonathan Fowler, UNRWA’s senior communications manager, told Jerusalem Story. “The problem there is that we have no lands leased to us by the State of Israel.”

The Israeli press reported that the ILA planned to build 1,440 housing units where UNRWA’s Jerusalem office currently stands.7 The ILA did not respond to Jerusalem Story’s queries on the plan.

Israel claims UNRWA’s headquarters is located on state land. In fact, the property was leased to UNRWA by the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in 1952, when East Jerusalem was under Jordanian control. According to Fowler, UNRWA pays a symbolic annual rental fee of 2,500 Jordanian dinars (approximately $3,525) to Jordan, which is deposited into an escrow account.

“We remained in exclusive possession of the compound without interruption until 1967, and then continuously after 1967, since Israel occupied the territory. And we have not had any challenges to our possession of the compound from the Israeli foreign ministry,” Fowler said, noting Israel’s foreign affairs ministry is the interlocutor between UNRWA and the State of Israel.

UNRWA also operates a vocational school in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Kufr ‘Aqab called the Qalandiya Training Center.

“We were granted exclusive rights to use the land by the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in 1951, with the specific goal of providing technical training for Palestine refugees,” Fowler said. “And exactly the same as with [the headquarters] we’ve had exclusive possession since then that’s not been interrupted after 1967.”

At the behest of Jerusalem’s deputy mayor, Arieh King, the ILA sent the Qalandiya Training Center an expulsion order in January 2024, claiming the land is owned by the Jewish National Fund (JNF), a quasi-governmental agency responsible for buying land for Jewish settlement.8

According to the Israeli justice ministry’s Land Registry Office, the plot where UNRWA’s school is located was registered under the JNF in 1937.9 Israeli domestic policy gives the Jewish organization the right to reclaim the property under the Legal and Administrative Matters Law–1970, an amendment to the Absentees’ Property Law—1950, which allows Jews to retake property in East Jerusalem they purportedly owned before 1948.

“Whereas Israel does not allow East Jerusalemites to reclaim property in West Jerusalem or inside the State of Israel, it claims that property in East Jerusalem that used to be owned by Jews should be returned to them,” Aviv Tatarsky, a researcher at Ir Amim, an Israeli NGO monitoring Jerusalem policy, told Jerusalem Story.10

However, Ardi Imseis, former legal counsel and public policy advisor to UNRWA and currently a member of the Faculty of Law at Queen’s University, argues that international law always trumps domestic law. In fact, the occupier’s domestic law is not relevant.

“The privileges and immunities of the United Nations are very clear: The property and assets of the United Nations are immune from all forms of interference—no matter who holds the property,” Imseis told Jerusalem Story, citing the Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the UN of 1946, to which Israel is a party.11

“Israel’s legislation shutting down UNRWA, as part of its broader attack on UNRWA, its facilities and personnel, violates the UN Charter and international law. As a UN member state, Israel is obliged to support and respect the privileges and immunities of all UN bodies,” Susan Akram, law professor and director of the International Human Rights Clinic at Boston University, told Jerusalem Story.12

Akram continued, “It prohibits member states from searching, confiscating, expropriating, or in any other way interfering with the property and assets of the UN. It also requires member states to provide all members of organs of the UN immunity from legal processes of any kind.”

Even though Israel is in violation of the UN Charter, which could lead to its expulsion, legal experts—like Akram and Imseis—believe this is an unlikely outcome.

According to Article 6 of the UN Charter, a member state can be expelled by the General Assembly if the UN Security Council makes that recommendation. Imseis explained that because the United States is one of the permanent members of the Security Council, it will veto any vote to expel Israel.

“The Security Council is not likely to recommend expulsion, but a General Assembly resolution can have significant weight with UN member states in their diplomatic relations with Israel,” Akram said.

Israel’s decision to ban UNRWA is the latest move in its relentless campaign attacking the agency. Throughout its war on Gaza, Israel has bombed 70 percent of UNRWA schools and killed 230 UNRWA staff members.13 These attacks aren’t restricted to Gaza. In November, Palestinian media reported that the Israeli military partially demolished UNRWA’s office in a West Bank refugee camp.14

While the Israeli government argues that UNRWA is not a neutral actor, human rights experts suggest that Israel’s opposition to it is actually rooted in UNRWA’s founding mission enshrining Palestinian refugees’ right of return to their homeland after Zionist and Israeli forces expelled them in 1947–48. They have never stopped demanding the right of return. For Israel, abolishing UNRWA means eliminating the right of return, even though international law does not agree.

“UNRWA gives hope to Palestinian refugees,” Milena Ansari, Israel and Palestine researcher at Human Rights Watch, told Jerusalem Story.15 “And it’s about UNRWA’s protection of the status of Palestinian refugees.”