Israel will not participate in upcoming International Court of Justice hearings regarding the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar announced on Sunday.
Sa’ar’s office sent out a statement announcing the decision, and he confirmed it during a Q&A at the JNS International Policy Summit in Jerusalem.
“Instead, Israel’s position on this matter will be delivered tomorrow (28.4) at a press conference at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,” the ministry’s statement read.
The U.N.’s top court is set to hear statements by lawyers from more than 40 states arguing that Israel’s ban on all cooperation with UNRWA is a breach of the U.N. charter.
The five days of hearings at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague are expected to focus on whether Israel acted unlawfully when it rescinded the immunities it had afforded to UNRWA.
Sa’ar noted that the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague had summoned Israel three times before the current hearings.
“I don’t think there is any precedent for a democratic country, or even a non-democratic country, to be brought to the ICJ,” he said. Israel, he added, “will not take the defendant’s stand” before the United Nations.
Sa’ar accused the Palestinian Authority and its backers of leading the international legal assault against the Jewish state at the ICJ, where Israel is also facing war crimes charges, and the International Criminal Court, where it is facing genocide charges. Israel and the United States, as well as Hungary, rejected these allegations.
“They are trying to minimize our ability to fight in the political battle,” Sa’ar said of the P.A. “For example, they sent the ICJ to deal with the ‘legality of the occupation.’ We say: There is no occupation. It is our land, we cannot occupy that.”
In November, Israel cut all ties with UNRWA operations in Gaza, Judea and Samaria and Jerusalem in accordance with a law passed after evidence surfaced of Hamas’s infiltration of the refugee agency.
In Israel, experts on UNRWA, including former Israeli lawmaker Einat Wilf, dispute claims that Israel’s refusal to work with UNRWA contradicts international law. Israel is not party to any treaty compelling it to engage with the group or allow its activities, Wilf told JNS.
UNRWA provides food, education and medical care to two million people in Gaza. Hundreds of UNRWA workers are believed to have engaged in terrorism in recent years, including on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas terrorists invaded Israel. At least one of them was filmed loading the body of an Israeli into a vehicle.
According to Israel, over 450 people belonging to terrorist organizations in Gaza, mainly Hamas, are also employed by UNRWA. UNRWA’s chief officer, Philippe Lazzarini, has flatly denied these allegations.
The onslaught of Oct. 7, 2023, in which thousands of terrorists murdered some 1,200 Israelis and abducted another 251, exposed new levels of complicity by multiple employees of UNRWA.
It led to the passing of laws banning Israeli officials from engaging with UNRWA and banning the agency’s activities in Israel.
Through UNRWA, the United Nations employs a unique refugee definition to Palestinians. UNRWA defines as refugees not only those who fled Israel’s War of Independence in 1948, but also their descendants in perpetuity, until a “just solution” emerges for their status. Critics accused the United Nations of insisting on this definition, preserved through UNRWA, to perpetuate the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
