Knesset Passes Law Blocking Provision of Electricity and Water to UNRWA Facilities
UNITED NATIONS, 5 Jan 2026
Sam Sokol | Times of Israel - TRANSCEND Media Service
A Palestinian woman walks past a damaged wall bearing the UNRWA logo at a camp for internally displaced persons in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on 28 May 2024.
[Eyad Baba /AFP]
Israel has alleged that more than 10 percent of the UN Palestinian refugee agency’s staff in Gaza have ties to terror groups.
29 Dec 2025 – A law prohibiting the provision of electricity or water to facilities owned by or operated on behalf of UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees and their descendants, passed its third and final reading 59-7 in the Knesset today.
The government-backed legislation requires electricity and water providers to withhold or disconnect service from UNRWA facilities, as well as block the provision of communications and banking or financial services to the agency.
UNRWA — the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East — provides education, health care and aid to millions of Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.
The measure is an amendment to two bills passed by lawmakers in October 2024, barring the agency from operating in Israeli territory and curtailing its activities in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank by banning state authorities from having any contact with it.
The law clarifies that the provision of electrical and water services should be considered “contact” under the law.
The legislation also allows the government to seize properties in Ma’alot Dafna and Kafr Aqab in Jerusalem, which had been leased to UNRWA by the state and used as the agency’s offices, “without the need to initiate legal or administrative proceedings.”
The agency continued to operate for some time after the original bills’ passage, but its schools in East Jerusalem were eventually ordered shuttered. Israeli police raided UNRWA’s offices in the capital earlier this month, lowering the United Nations flag and raising an Israeli flag in its place.
Addressing the Knesset, Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Chairman Boaz Bismuth (Likud) declared that “UNRWA employees were full partners in the brutal massacre they committed against us on October 7. They assisted, murdered and kidnapped. In practice, UNRWA is an arm of Hamas. Terrorists in disguise under the auspices of the UN.”
Israel has alleged that more than 10 percent of UNRWA’s staff in Gaza have ties to terror groups, and that educational facilities under the organization’s auspices consistently incite hatred of Israel and glorify terror.
In February 2024, the IDF revealed the existence of a subterranean Hamas data center directly beneath UNRWA’s Gaza Strip headquarters. The IDF has also repeatedly targeted Hamas command centers and gunmen hiding out in UNRWA schools.
Freed hostage Emily Damari said after returning to Israel that she was held in captivity in UNRWA schools and facilities, a claim the agency said it took “extremely seriously.”
At the same time, some Israeli politicians and officials saw the relief that the agency provided as a means of keeping the Gaza Strip, and parts of the West Bank, from deeper poverty and thus greater violence and terrorism.
Rejecting Israeli allegations, the International Court of Justice issued an advisory opinion in October asserting that Israel is legally obligated to allow the agency to provide humanitarian aid in Gaza, and stating that the provision of aid to the Strip during the war there has been inadequate.
The court dismissed Israel’s main argument for its legislation blocking UNRWA’s operations — that the organization is no longer impartial or neutral due to its “infiltration” by the Hamas terror group — stating that there was no evidence UNRWA breached the impartiality requirements under Article 59 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which it said related to discrimination in the provision of humanitarian aid and services.
The advisory opinion, which is not legally binding, was issued by 10 votes to one, with court Vice President Julia Sebutinde dissenting and writing that the court did not “sufficiently consider” Hamas’s infiltration of UNRWA, and stating that there is “no obligation to assist UN agencies acting contrary to the Charter’s principles,” or work with any specific organization.
The UN General Assembly endorsed the court’s view earlier this month.
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Jeremy Sharon contributed to this report.
Go to Original – timesofisrael.com
Tags: Anti-hegemony, Anti-imperialism, Bullying, Francesca Albanese, Rogue states, State Terrorism, UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees UNRWA, UNHCHR, USA, United Nations
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