• The UN Palestinian relief agency — UNRWA — continued to deliver assistance and services in the Gaza Strip, West Bank and East Jerusalem on January 30, as a ban on the agency in Israel came into effect.
• Its clinics across the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, are open while the humanitarian operation in Gaza continues.
• In October 2024, the Israeli Parliament — known as the Knesset — passed two laws that called for ending UNRWA’s operations in its territory.
• The two new laws simultaneously prohibit Israeli authorities from contacting UNRWA and bans the agency from operating in war-ravaged Gaza and East Jerusalem and the West Bank from January 30.
• The ban threatens life-saving aid, education and healthcare for millions in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) and the UN has repeatedly warned of the consequences.
• The UNRWA said it had not received any official communication on how the Bills will be implemented.
• Since 1950, UNRWA has been assisting Palestine refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
What is the purpose of UNRWA?
• Created in December 1949, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) is a relief and human development agency which supports more than five million registered Palestinian refugees, and their patrilineal descendants, who fled or were expelled from their homes during the 1948 Palestine war as well as those who fled or were expelled during and following the 1967 Six Day war.
• The UNRWA has been providing health, education, relief and social services, as well as emergency humanitarian assistance, across its five fields of operation — Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, West Bank and the Gaza Strip — since 1950.
• It also provided relief to Jewish and Arab Palestine refugees inside the State of Israel following the 1948 conflict until the Israeli government took over responsibility for Jewish refugees in 1952.
• In the absence of a solution to the Palestine refugee problem, the UN General Assembly has repeatedly renewed UNRWA’s mandate.
• The refugees and their descendants number about six million, and in Gaza they are the majority of the population.
• Almost all funding comes from voluntary contributions, and mostly from donor states.
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