MK Edelstein: If We Want to Live, UNRWA Has to Be Outlawed and Out of Israel

By Aryeh Stern

​The Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, chaired by MK Yuli Edelstein (Likud), convened on Monday for an initial debate to prepare for first reading the Bill for Stopping the Activity of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), 2023. The bill was sponsored by MKs Boaz Bismuth, Eli Dallal, Hanoch Milwidsky, Tally Gotliv and Nissim Vaturi (Likud), and Avraham Bezalel (Shas).

The bill proposes to prohibit the UNRWA from operating within Israel’s sovereign territory, and to instruct the Israel Police to take action to enforce this prohibition.

The explanatory notes to the bill state: “The role of UNRWA is to deal with Palestinian refugees only, meaning that there is no room for it to give any services within the territory of the State of Israel, in which there are no Palestinian refugees, but rather residents of the state who receive services from its various institutions.

“UNRWA’s activity is also not needed in territories under Palestinian sovereignty, and the Palestinian Authority should take responsibility for its residents and not hide behind a corrupt organization that provides its residents with services at a low level and perpetuates the sense of victimhood within the Palestinian people. The continued existence of this organization in the State of Israel’s territory distances our region from any hope for coexistence, and particularly harms the fabric of life among Yerushalayim’s residents.”

Committee Chair MK Edelstein said, “The problem of UNRWA did not start on Oct. 7, it only came to the surface and was exposed in its full diabolical nature. For many years, MKS from all ends of the political spectrum have been raising the issue and advancing bills on the issue. We all saw UNRWA’s activity on Oct. 7 — it was not tending to ‘relief and works.’ We know that some of the hostages were held by employees of the organization. This is a complex issue with broad ramifications, but the bottom line is clearer now more than ever: If we want to live, UNRWA has to be outlawed and out of Israel, period.”

MK Bismuth said, “We are all in accord as to the move that will lead to shutting down the organization, certainly in our eternal capital of Yerushalayim. This is a terrorist organization in disguise, whose employees proved to be Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists. Intelligence indicates that 23% of the male employees of UNRWA have ties with Hamas, and 49% of all the organization’s employees have relatives with ties to the terrorist organization.”

MK Gotliv said, “Sometimes the people of Israel aren’t ready to understand and recognize who our enemies are. Apparently, even when the Government decides something specific, anonymous senior security officials issue briefings that stand in complete contrast to the Government’s position in this regard.”

MK Ron Katz (Yesh Atid) said, “The state can display leadership and courage and say that it doesn’t recognize UNRWA. If we want to shorten this whole lengthy process of legislation in the committee, we should call from here to the foreign minister to display leadership and stop the contact with this organization by an order, and then they’ll disappear from our lives in the State of Israel.”

MK Vaturi said, “UNRWA helped to kidnap Jews; we don’t want the same thing to happen to us in Yehudah and Shomron. They are partners to the enemy. The terrorists themselves serve in UNRWA. The U.N. has long since become irrelevant when it comes to Israel’s security.”

MK Matan Kahana (National Unity Party) said, “This is one of those rare issues on which Yesh Atid and Otzma Yehudit are in accord, and we have to ensure that this bill will be expanded and will not remain at the minimum.”

Assaf Yazdi, director-general of the Ministry of Jerusalem Affairs and Jewish Heritage, updated the committee members: “A month and a half ago, we were asked by the National Security Council to lead the inter-ministerial preparations for the day UNRWA will not be in Yerushalayim. We started working with the ministries, mainly the Ministries of Education, Health and Welfare, and with the Yerushalayim municipality. The main field that requires a response is the education field, in which there are over 1,000 students. We are preparing an immediate and long-term response for each issue, and when this bill passes, we will consider the order to have been given [to begin implementation]. It’s important for the committee to be familiar with the issue of ownership or claims of ownership by UNRWA to buildings in east Jerusalem; we are now mapping the buildings.”

Ronit Chen, district supervisor for the Yerushalayim Education Administration at the Ministry of Education, said, “We’re talking about just 1,000 students, the overwhelming majority of whom are in the Shuafat refugee camp. Studies there are without tuition fees, and this draws the disadvantaged sectors of the population. The Ministry of Education supervision doesn’t go in there. As for preparation, as soon as an order is given to close the schools, it will take time to prepare buildings that will offer a response, about six months.”

National Security Council official Gideon Shaviv said, “The Prime Minister’s policy is to work to replace UNRWA, and the National Security Council is working to this end in a variety of fields. The bill in its current wording could have significant diplomatic repercussions, and we can elaborate on them in a classified debate.”

Itai Apter of the Ministry of Justice said, “We are mobilizing for the effort to enable UNRWA to be replaced. This bill has significant legal difficulties, and we can explain them in a classified debate.”

Committee Chairman MK Edelstein announced that he intended to fully exhaust the deliberations in the coming month, so that it would be possible to vote on the bill in its first reading at the start of the summer assembly.