Worsening relations between the United Nations and Israel appear to have reached a nadir with the imminent passage of a bill in the Israeli Knesset designed to make it impossible for the UN relief and works agency for Palestinians (Unrwa) to operate in Gaza and West Bank.
Unrwa has long been a target of Israel, predating its claims that up to 12 members of the group’s staff took part in the 7 October attacks , but the move to ban the agency altogether signals a fresh polarisation that may take years to reverse.
The consequences of a major US ally in the Middle East being largely contemptuous of the UN and the international legal institutions it upholds are likely to be long-lasting and profound.
In a sign of support for the bills, the former defence minister Benny Gantz accused Unrwa of choosing “to make itself an inseparable component of Hamas’s mechanism – and now is the time to detach ourselves entirely from it … Instead of fulfilling its purpose and improving the lives of refugees, Unrwa does the opposite and perpetuates their victimisation.”
The west has had doubts about aspects of Unrwa ‘s neutrality but still sees it as the best body available to deliver aid, education and health to Palestinians. If the Knesset succeeds in shutting down the organisation, the question of how to channel aid to 2.4 million people in Gaza and the West Bank will become acute.
The crisis is imminent. Two bills passed on 6 October by the Knesset’s foreign affairs and defence committee will probably go to the Knesset plenum by 28 October, according to Adalah, a legal centre for Arab minority rights in Israel. The measures look to have a cross-party majority of about 100 of the 120 members.
One of the bills seeks to ban Unrwa from operating within Israel’s sovereign territory, stating that the agency “shall not establish any representation, provide any services or conduct any activities within the territory of Israel”. This would lead to closure of the Unrwa headquarters in East Jerusalem and end visas for Unrwa staff. The proposal, which Adalah claims would be a breach of international court of justice orders directing Israel to cooperate with the UN over the delivery of humanitarian supplies, would come into force within three months of the bill’s passage.
Although the plan has been condemned widely – including by ambassadors from 123 member states – it is probably only Washington that can persuade Israel to rethink. The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and the defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, issued a joint letter warning that “enacting such restrictions would devastate the humanitarian response in Gaza at this critical moment and deny essential educational and social services to tens of thousands of Palestinians in the West Bank and Jerusalem”. The statement was issued even though the US Congress has not yet agreed to restore its funding to Unrwa, unlike every other western nation.
Ironically, until the 7 October attacks the relationship between Unrwa and Israel was one of necessary respect since, at one level, the agency carried out the relief work that an occupying power itself should do. As such it took a burden off Israel.
Unrwa’s chief, Philippe Lazzarini, insists he acted decisively by firing the relevant staff after a review of the allegations of involvement in the attack were publishedand in implementing the recommendations of a subsequent report by the French foreign minister, Catherine Colonna.
Unrwa also points out that successive Israeli efforts to deliver aid through alternative routes have failed. No other UN agency has the ability to take on the breadth of Unrwa’s work, it is argued.
But, as throughout the region, Israel has signalled it is determined to change the rules of the game, and that involves no longer tolerating what it sees as UN interference. In a choice between international law and a risk to Israel’s security, the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, insists “better a bad press than a good eulogy”.
The roots of UN-Israeli tensions go much deeper. Israel for years has accused the UN of being a cesspit of antisemitism. As long ago as 1984 Netanyahu said he regarded his mission as Israel’s ambassador to the UN as trying to light the candle of truth in a house of darkness.
In 1987, the British diplomat Brian Urquhart, former UN under secretary for special political affairs, lamented that “the UN’s involvement in the question of Palestine has twisted the organisation’s image and fragmented its reputation and prestige, as no other nation has”.
One reason was touched upon in a reported remark by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, a fortnight ago. He was quoted as saying Israel should abide by UN resolutions since it was the UN that had created the state of Israel in 1947, an observation that led to a torrent of criticism from Netanyahu and French Jewish groups.
Gérard Araud, the former French ambassador to the UN, sprang to Macron’s defence by saying the reaction to the president’s remarks had been “astonishing since it is an undeniable fact: the state of Israel was created by resolution 181 of the UN general assembly of 29 November, 1947.
This perception of the birth of the creation of Israel – a birth that did not go as the UN intended – has given the body a special sense of responsibility to rectify what many member states regard as an error. By contrast it is anathema to many Israelis that they should feel the need to be grateful or even deferential to the UN.
Ever since, an expanded and increasingly post-colonial UN has felt a responsibility to right what many members regard as an injustice of its own making.
As the composition of the UN changed, the cold war deepened and the anti-colonial movement grew, hostility towards Israel increased, leading to a 1975 resolution passed by 72 to 32 and subsequently rescinded declaring Zionism as a form of racism. The US also increasingly came to see the conflict as its preserve, leaving the UN as a bystander passing critical motions.
This year will be remembered as the year the UN tried to reassert itself. It has led to something close to a standoff between a global institution that believes it is upholding the fragile reputation of the international rule of law and a country that believes it is locked in an existential battle in which the UN is cheering on its persecutors.
The international court of justice, the world’s most prestigious court, first found Israel plausibly responsible for committing genocide in January and then followed that with three sets of additional orders directing Israel to deliver unhindered aid at scale in Gaza. In July, in a longstanding case, it delivered its advisory but striking opinion that Israel had since 1967 been occupying the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip in breach of international law.
On 18 September, the UN general assembly voted – by 124 votes to 14, including Israel, and 43 abstentions – that the ICJ ruling requiring the end to the occupation be enforced within a year.
Israel has fought back. Some of the many UN special rapporteurs have long been banned by Israel, but it was a new step when the UN’s secretary general, António Guterres, was declared persona non-grata in Israel. His final offence was judged to be a failure to condemn Iran for mounting a missile assault on Israel. But he had already drawn Israel’s ire for saying the attack on 7 October did not happen in a vacuum, and for describing the damage being committed in Gaza as the worst he had ever seen in his period of office.
In September, Netanyau delivered his annual address to the UN general assembly. He did not name Guterres personally but described the UN as “a swamp of antisemitic bile” and the UN Guterres led as “a once-respected institution contemptible in the eyes of decent people everywhere”. The UN human rights council is a terrorist rights council, he said.
His longstanding complaint is that, amid injustices all over the world, Israel has been singled out for condemnation.
The battle has not just been fought in diplomatic halls but on the ground in Gaza and Lebanon. Just as it has accused Unrwa of bias and ineptitude, similar charges have been laid against the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon, Unifil.
According to the pro-Israel pressure group UN Watch, Unifil “did nothing” as “Hezbollah was digging tunnels to invade Israel, kidnap and attack Israeli civilians … and embedding missiles in civilian homes”. Western powers say the UN has a restricted mandate and the solution is to toughen the mandate.
No one as yet has presented a tangible way of bringing these running battles to an end. The danger is that some come to see the solution in the expulsion of the UN, but once that starts the disintegration of the UN itself is on the agenda.
