UNRWA runs East Jerusalem medical centre that serves 30,000

28/1/2025 6:05

Tens of thousands of

Palestinian refugees in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem were set

to lose education, healthcare and other services provided by

U.N. agency UNRWA as an Israeli ban on the organisation takes

effect on Thursday.



Israel's government ordered UNRWA to vacate its East

Jerusalem compound and cease operations under a law passed last

year outlawing the agency and prohibiting Israeli authorities

from having contact with it.



At UNRWA's offices in East Jerusalem's Sheikh Jarrah

neighbourhood, workers were packing boxes and loading portable

buildings onto a truck on Monday.



"It's an unacceptable decision," said Jonathan Fowler, a

spokesperson for UNRWA, formally titled the United Nations

Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East.



"The people that we serve ... we are not able to tell them

what is going to happen to our services as of the end of this

week."



Israel has not announced provisions for replacing UNRWA's

activities, and the Israeli prime minister's office did not

immediately respond to a request for comment.



UNRWA has for decades run schools and clinics in East

Jerusalem, the eastern part of the city that Israel has occupied

since a 1967 war, for tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees

who have no nationality.



"We have everything here for us. When I heard that it will

close, I was very sad because here is a place for people in need

and for people who don’t have money to pay for medication,"

refugee Sara Saeed said at the UNRWA medical centre in

Jerusalem's Old City.



Medical centre Director Hamza Al Jibrini said the facility

serves 30,000 refugees. Among them are patients with diabetes

and high blood pressure, pregnant women and children who receive

vaccinations, said head of nursing Manal AlKhayat.



"Where they will go?" she asked.



Israel's ban only directly covers Israeli territory, which

Israel considers East Jerusalem to be. UNRWA also operates in

the occupied West Bank and Gaza, but it was unclear how the law

will affect UNRWA's work there.







ISRAEL CLAIMS BIAS



UNRWA was established some 75 years ago, serving around

750,000 Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war at the time of

the creation of the state of Israel.



Its sprawling headquarters are in a prime position not far

from Jerusalem's Old City, which is home to sites holy to

Christians, Jews and Muslims. The agency has long been a thorn

in the eye of Israeli governments that considered the agency

fundamentally hostile to Israel.



Israel says UNRWA's continued existence decades after the

1948 war has consolidated the refugee status of generations of

Palestinians, who now number in the millions, and has frozen the

conflict in place.



Israel regularly accuses the agency of anti-Israel bias and

has also claimed its staff includes members of Hamas, the

Palestinian militant group that launched the deadly cross-border

raid on Israel on Oct 7, 2023. Israel calls for UNRWA's

responsibilities to be taken over by other UN bodies such as its

main refugee agency.



The U.N. rejects accusations of bias and says that UNRWA's

expertise is irreplaceable, particularly in Gaza.



A U.N. investigation found that nine UNRWA staff may have

been involved in the Hamas attack. The agency fired them but

said Israel had not provided evidence of more widespread

involvement by its staff. UNRWA employs around 30,000 people in

the region and some 13,000 in the Gaza Strip.



More than 200 UNRWA staff have been killed in Gaza, the

agency says, since the Gaza war started. Around 1,200 Israelis

and foreigners were killed in the Oct. 7, 2023 attack and

another 250 were taken hostage into Gaza, Israel says.



Over 47,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since

Israel's military launched a retaliatory offensive, according to

Gaza's health ministry.