In a letter sent on Monday to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that a pair of Knesset laws to banish UNRWA from Israel “could” prevent the Palestinian-only aid agency from operating in Judea and Samaria, Gaza and eastern Jerusalem.
In the letter, obtained by JNS, Guterres appeals to Netanyahu and his government “to prevent such devastating consequences and to allow UNRWA to continue carrying out its activities,” citing international law.
Guterres took particular exception to a clause in one of the newly passed laws prohibiting any activity by UNRWA “within the sovereign territory of the State of Israel,” which would include all parts of Jerusalem.
He wrote that the U.N. deems eastern Jerusalem “to be part of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and that Israel is not entitled to sovereignty over, or to exercise sovereign powers, in any part of the Occupied Palestinian Territory on account of its occupation.”
U.N. officials have previously stated that UNRWA’s work would be impossible to carry out with the passage of the laws, which also require the severance of communication between Israel and UNRWA—something Guterres writes would in effect serve as a violation of Israel’s supposed responsibility to provide for “the needs of the population” in territory the U.N. deems occupied.
Guterres and Netanyahu have not spoken since the Oct. 7, 2023, onslaught on Israel, with Netanyahu refusing to take Guterres’ calls. The discord came about as a result of a statement in late October 2023 by Guterres, claiming there was no justification for the Hamas attacks before asserting the massacres didn’t happen “in a vacuum,” then running through a laundry list of declared Palestinian grievances.
The statement, which Guterres refused to retract, caused a downward spiral in U.N.-Israel relations, leading up to Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz declaring earlier this month that Guterres is persona non grata in Israel.
Israel withdrew all its citizens from the Gaza Strip in 2005, two years before Hamas’s violent takeover of the Palestinian Authority in the enclave. Subsequent terrorist activity led to Israeli restrictions in and around the Strip.
The United Nations also considers eastern Jerusalem, which Israel liberated from Jordan in the defensive 1967 Six-Day War, occupied. Guterres endorsed a U.N. General Assembly resolution passed earlier this year that calls for the removal of Jews from Jerusalem’s historic Old City and other Jewish neighborhoods in eastern Jerusalem.
Guterres’s letter to Netanyahu also included a suggestion that the U.N. could initiate a case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, which resolves differences between the U.N. and member states.
“I will continue to update the General Assembly on the matter so the Assembly can consider appropriate action,” Guterres wrote.
The letter makes no mention of UNRWA’s documented ties to Palestinian terror organizations, including Hamas, which sparked the legislation Guterres denounced.
