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Jess Manville

Israel’s race to dismantle UNRWA may backfire

For all its flaws, gutting the relief agency will not make Israel safer, especially without a viable alternative
A man carries a humanitarian aid package provided by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in central Gaza City on August 27, 2024. (Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
A man carries a humanitarian aid package provided by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in central Gaza City on August 27, 2024. (Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)

Since the devastating attacks on October 7 and the subsequent revelations of UNRWA’s deeper-than-expected ties to Hamas, Israel’s political establishment has intensified efforts to dismantle the agency. Yesterday, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin sent a blunt letter to Israeli Ministers Ron Dermer and Yoav Gallant, conveying serious concern over the spiraling humanitarian situation in Gaza, as well as Israel’s campaign to shut down UNRWA’s operations in the Palestinian territories. Alongside urging swift action to address the dire conditions and avoid triggering ramifications under US law, Washington called on Israel to cancel the legislation.

The diplomatic intervention follows the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee approval last week of two merged bills intended to terminate UNRWA’s local presence and sever all Israeli-UNRWA contact–a step reflecting years of Israel’s longstanding and more recent grievances with the organization. But this legislative effort carries immense and largely unexamined risks that could backfire.

Israel’s case against UNRWA is rooted in serious and well-founded concerns. Over the past year, revelations uncovered disturbing evidence of staff involvement in the October 7 atrocities, instances of weapons caches stored on its property, and the discovery of a Hamas command and control center beneath its headquarters. These findings point to a deeper UNRWA-Hamas entanglement, reinforcing long-standing accusations that the agency serves more as a shield for militancy rather than a neutral service delivery provider. Critics have long argued that UNRWA, which now supports a 5.9 million registered still-expanding beneficiary pool, lacks a mandate for seeking sustainable solutions, perpetuates the refugee issue, politicizes its operations, and conducts its work with minimal transparency and oversight.

Yet for all its flaws, rushing to dismantle UNRWA – especially without a viable alternative – will not make Israel safer. At a moment when the country is engaged on multiple fronts, such a drastic measure risks igniting an already volatile landscape in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Shutting down the agency could trigger immediate chaos in the West Bank, sapping Israel’s resources further from areas where it needs it like in Southern Lebanon, and opening new fronts of instability that could overburden its already overstretched military.

If passed in the second and third readings, the Knesset legislation, which enjoys broad support, would strip UNRWA of its privileges and immunities under the 1946 UN Convention and the 1967 exchange of letters–effectively making it legally impossible for the agency to operate in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. The “no-contact” policy would bar all Israeli officials and entities from interacting with UNRWA personnel or bodies, severing crucial communications channels that have historically been used to protect all parties, despite the obvious tensions. Israel is already planning the confiscation of UNRWA’s East Jerusalem headquarters, following an eviction order issued by the Israel Land Authority in May and after incidents of Israeli locals vandalizing the property.

The stakes are especially high in the West Bank. UNRWA currently–even under tense conditions–coordinates closely with the IDF’s Civil Administration, the sudden severance of communication would disrupt vital deconfliction procedures and hinder civil-military coordination, affecting IDF operations in densely-populated and hostile refugee camps where militant groups have proliferated. This breakdown would not only escalate the risk to Israeli soldiers but also open the door to new levels of chaos and unrest.

On the economic front, the West Bank is already suffering from the loss of income for the more than 100,000 Palestinian workers now barred from entering Israel (comprising 20% of West Bank GDP), withheld tax revenues, and the wider war’s disruptions, which have sent unemployment rates skyrocketing to 30% across the West Bank – and up to 60% in the refugees camps. Stripping UNRWA out of this equation would pull the safety net from 913,000 beneficiaries who rely on its social services, healthcare, and schooling. For the 47,000 students now left without education, the risk of radicalization will only grow, feeding a vicious cycle of militancy and despair.

In Gaza, the consequences could be even more severe. Despite Israel’s non-cooperation policy and circumvention of the agency on the ground, UNRWA remains the de facto backbone of humanitarian operations. The vast majority of the INGOs in Gaza rely on its logistical and administrative platforms. This was particularly on show during the recent polio vaccination campaign that saw efficient, effective cooperation, including with the IDF. Scaling up other agencies to fill this gap is a welcome step, but the focus should be on a measured transition – not a rushed, chaotic exit. Forcing UNRWA prematurely out would only entrench instability, making a fragile situation unmanageable.

The rippling effects are likely to be felt along Israel’s unstable borders. UNRWA’s other operational zones in Jordan and Lebanon – where refugee communities are already fragile – would be similarly destabilized. In Jordan, tensions between impoverished camp residents and surrounding communities could escalate into broader unrest. In Lebanon, where the agency’s installations are often caught between Hezbollah and other factions, losing deconfliction lines with the IDF could make future escalations far deadlier.

Almost a year in, the search for an alternative to UNRWA has yielded little more than fantasies of piecemeal and non-viable options. Ideas of reassigning its role to other UN agencies are disconnected from reality – no other body has the same mandate, nor the capacity to deliver comprehensive, direct services like UNRWA that bridge between recovery and reconstruction. Expecting other UN agencies to morph into an effective substitute to fill this void would require rewriting mandates, mobilizing immense resources, securing broad international buy-in, and overcoming complex bureaucratic hurdles, with multiple obstacles and no guarantee of success.

Even if mandates were altered, a new structure would face the same entrenched challenges: political resistance, local staff non-cooperation, and the potential collapse of donor support. Simply switching agencies would create more disruption, leading to the same instability that would ultimately push Israel to shoulder the financial and political burden of service provision in a hostile environment.

For its part, UNRWA has acknowledged the need for urgent reform, and guided by the Colonna Report published in April 2024 by the former French Foreign Minister, has taken initial steps – tightening internal oversight, enhancing staff vetting, and addressing neutrality issues. But these are small and insufficient moves against a backdrop of deeply eroded integrity and trust.

What’s needed is a rigorous, internationally-driven reform agenda that tackles UNRWA’s core deficiencies head-on. Without a viable alternative in the interim – and until its services can be transitioned to the Palestinian Authority or host countries at a politically opportune moment in the future – efforts must focus on addressing Israel’s legitimate security concerns without triggering further instability.

This means conditional funding tied to concrete benchmarks, robust external monitoring, and coordinated donor pressure to ensure compliance. The decision by all but the US to resume funding without attaching strict conditions or oversight was a missed opportunity. UNRWA will not self-reform and its internal procedures for monitoring progress are inadequate. Washington should lead the way by establishing a US-led UNRWA watchdog within the State Department to track and report on adherence to reforms.

This also means introducing more robust vetting and screening procedures of staff, and securitization and protection of facilities and improving the transparency of employee identity and refugee registration; granting Israel full access to lists in advance. Scaling up funding to other humanitarian agencies to reduce UNRWA’s monopolistic role, as well as transitioning out non-core UNRWA services not in its original mandate to other entities such as waste management and diverting funding toward these ends. UNRWA and the Palestinian Authority should work with Gulf states and the European Union to facilitate much-needed educational reforms to replace problematic curriculum content that incites violence and hatred, as part of an “RPA” process that can feed into the deradicalization agenda that is a core Israeli interest.

Destroying UNRWA without a strategic plan will only deepen the region’s instability and complicate Israel’s multilayered security challenges. Instead, a more prudent approach would be to leverage international pressure for serious, enforceable reform – while building up capacity elsewhere to eventually phase out UNRWA’s role in the future. Anything less risks turning an already fraught situation into a full-blown crisis, with detrimental consequences that extend far beyond Israel’s borders.

This article is co-authored by Dr. Shira Efron is Israel Policy Forum’s Diane and Guilford Glazer Foundation Senior Director of Policy Research.

Dr. Efron and Jess Manville are the authors of a report, “UNRWA at a Crossroads: Charting a Course to Meaningful Reform .”

About the Author
Jess Manville is an Israel Policy Forum policy advisor based in Tel Aviv. She previously co-led Terrestrial Jerusalem’s policy task force, and worked as foreign relations director at the Geneva Initiative. Prior to this, Jess was a journalist at i24NEWS.