The Israeli ban on the activities of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) went into effect on Jan. 30. Its most immediate impact was expected to be on the UNRWA’s headquarters in East Jerusalem. East Jerusalem hosts two Palestinian refugee camps that are home to 110,000 people who are dependent on UNRWA for health care, education and other municipal type services. A total shutdown would end primary healthcare for up to 80,000 Palestinians in East Jerusalem through some two dozen medical centers, AP reported on Jan. 29, citing UNRWA officials. It would also halt education and vocational training for up to 1,000 children in the middle of a school year.
As of Jan. 30, the agency had yet to receive any official communication on how the Israeli Knesset’s ban will be implemented, reported Middle East Eye. “For now, our plan is to undertake our duties—that is to deliver services and humanitarian assistance to people wherever they are in the occupied Palestinian territory,” UNRWA spokeswoman Juliette Touma told ABC News in an interview.
The agency’s headquarters in East Jerusalem remains, Touma told The Guardian, adding that it must be protected as it is a UN compound. “We don’t have plans to close our operations,” Touma said, adding that “the agency’s efforts in the West Bank and Gaza are ongoing. But we are in the dark. We have not received any instructions from Israel how the ban will be enforced beyond being told to vacate.”
The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement on Feb. 1 calling on Israel to suspend its ban on UNRWA: “Moscow is convinced that the UNRWA mission, which has supported peaceful Palestinians in the occupied territories and neighboring countries for decades, as well as guaranteed ensuring the fundamental right of refugees to return, should be continued until the final peaceful settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which provides for the creation of an independent sovereign state of Palestine within the 1967 borders with its capital in East Jerusalem, coexisting in peace and security with Israel,” the ministry said, reported TASS.
The statement also clarified that Israel’s decision to ban the activities of the UNRWA is deeply disappointing. “Such arbitrary steps, which have the most serious humanitarian consequences for the Palestinians, are deeply disappointing and deserve condemnation,” the ministry said.