Madrid. The Knesset or Israeli Parliament approved this Monday a law that prohibits all activities of the United Nations Refugee Agency in the Near East (UNRWA) both in Israel and in the Palestinian territories.
A total of 92 of the 120 deputies of the unicameral Israeli Parliament supported the initiative, while ten voted against. Opposition parties such as Yesh Atid, the National Unity Party and Yisrael Beiteinu also voted in favor of the proposal, reported the Israeli newspaper ‘Haaretz’.
The vote was preceded by a tense debate in which one of the deputies of the ruling Likud party, Tally Gotliv, tried to attack the Arab-Israeli deputy Ahmed Tibi when he was on the stage.
House staff had to restrain Gotliv after Tibi criticized the “fascist” anti-Unrwa bill. “The Palestinian people will be free from the occupation,” Tibi said amid shouts from right-wing deputies urging him to leave the Knesset.
The janitors in the room also intervened to prevent the Minister of National Security and leader of the far-right Jewish Power party, Itamar Ben Gvir, and the leader of the socialist and Arab-Israeli Hadash-Taal party, Aiman Odé, from coming to blows. They both yelled at each other during the session.
The bill, promoted by deputies Yulia Malinovsky, Dan Illouz and Boaz Bismuth — the first from Yisrael Beytenu and the other two from the main party of Israel’s far-right governing coalition, the Likud — would effectively prevent the organization from operating in Israeli territory and the Palestinian territories by revoking a 1967 text that served as the basis for its activities.
A few weeks ago, the Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, also asked the Israeli Parliament to annul the procedure and reminded Israel of the unprecedented phenomenon that a state’s ban on the local activities of a UN agency would entail. member.
Israel has argued for years that UNRWA is an inoperative agency and, since the outbreak of the Gaza war, complicit with the Palestinian Hamas militias in their attacks on the country. Malinovsky herself denounced, during the presentation of the bill, that the agency “should not even exist” and even accompanied her proposal with a request to declare UNRWA a terrorist organization, which was ultimately rejected.
Last March, Israel accused “a significant number” of UNRWA workers of “being members of terrorist organizations,” which led 16 countries to suspend or freeze funds, suddenly depriving this organization of $450 million and casting doubt on the continuity of its operations.
However, in mid-April, the external investigation headed by former French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna ruled out that the Israeli authorities would provide evidence that would prove the alleged terrorist links attributed to several of the UNRWA employees.
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