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Israel has approved the construction of a new military complex at a site that formerly hosted the UNRWA headquarters in occupied East Jerusalem — a site it demolished in January.
The Israeli military complex will be built at the United Nations Relief and Work Agency (UNRWA) compound in Sheikh Jarrah, occupied East Jerusalem, which previously provided humanitarian services like health care and education to Palestinian refugees. The new complex will include a military induction center, an office for the defense minister, and a military museum.
In December 2025, Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir led forces into the UNRWA compound, removed the UN flag, and raised the Israeli flag over the main building. Israel then bulldozed the headquarters of the UN agency in January.
At the time, UN Secretary-General António Guterres condemned the action, saying the site “remains United Nations premises and is inviolable.”
The compound first became UNRWA’s East Jerusalem headquarters in 1952, and was used by the UN agency through 2024. After October 7, 2023, Israeli settlers and right-wing activists protested in front of the UNRWA compound in East Jerusalem, and its staff faced repeated obstruction, threats, arson attacks, and harassment by Israeli settlers and authorities alike. In October 2024, Israel’s parliament passed legislation prohibiting UNRWA operations inside Israel — which the Israeli government interprets to include occupied East Jerusalem.
In January 2025, Israel ordered UNRWA to vacate its East Jerusalem premises and cease its operations within days, and declined to renew the work visas of its staff, forcing them to relocate to Jordan. As a result, the site had been largely unused over the past year.
Israel has long accused the UN agency, which provides aid to millions of Palestinian refugees, of supporting Hamas, and has waged a years-long campaign against the agency. In addition to the UNRWA headquarters in East Jerusalem, Israel has forced the closure of UNRWA schools for Palestinian children in the occupied city, and passed legislation to cut off basic services from UNRWA facilities.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz wrote on X of the announcement to build a defense compound at the site that “the government decision we advanced today is a decision of sovereignty, Zionism and security.” His post included an AI-generated image of himself in front of bulldozers demolishing the UNRWA compound.
“We outlawed this terror-supporting UN organization and took the land, and now on its ruins we are building and strengthening Jerusalem — the eternal capital of the Jewish people,” he wrote.
Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967, and quickly began to annex its land, in violation of international law. Since then, it has continued to expropriate land and ethnically cleanse Palestinians from the city. This effort was emboldened by Trump’s 2017 declaration of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and relocation of the U.S. embassy to the city.
Dispossession of Palestinians from East Jerusalem, including from the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem, where the UNRWA compound is located, has sparked protest by Palestinians. The height of these protests was in 2021, when Israel’s attempts to forcibly expel Palestinian families from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah gave rise to a mass, youth-led Palestinian uprising, dubbed the “Unity Intifada.”
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