Media Releases

“The Israeli decision to ban UNRWA was an inevitable consequence of the international community’s failure to respond to decades of warnings, backed with overwhelming evidence, that this UN agency was facilitating and inciting terrorism, and had also become a significant barrier to any hopes of an Israeli-Palestinian two-state peace.

“For many years, there have been reports that UNRWA was using international donor money to cooperate with Hamas, employ supporters and members of terrorist organisations, incite violence, and educate Palestinians towards hatred and intolerance rather than a future of peaceful coexistence.

“In the last year, it has been proven that numerous UNRWA employees participated in the October 7 massacre, that perhaps half of its employees in Gaza are either members of a terror group or have family members who are, and that a major Hamas IT and intelligence bunker was located directly under UNRWA’s main Gaza headquarters in such a way that UNRWA employees working there must have been aware of it. Yet there have still been no serious efforts at reform of the agency.

“Is it any wonder that Israelis have lost patience, and decided to counter the direct terrorist threat to them posed by UNRWA? There is a reason the Israeli legislation targeting UNRWA also gained support from almost all the left-leaning Israeli opposition parties, as well as the current right-leaning government.

“Of course, aid must continue to flow freely to Palestinians in Gaza and elsewhere, as the Israeli Government acknowledged and emphasised in the wake of the vote to ban UNRWA. It has been amply demonstrated over recent months that other aid agencies, such as the World Food Program, are at least as capable of managing that aid as UNRWA, and the Israeli legislation has a three-month delay built into it to allow an effective transition to other agencies.”

Dr Colin Rubenstein
Executive Director, AIJAC