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On Tuesday, Israeli forces stormed the headquarters of the UN agency dedicated to providing humanitarian assistance for Palestinians, demolishing buildings in an attack that the agency condemned as “unprecedented.”
Armed with bulldozers and tear gas, the Israeli military forcefully entered the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) office in Sheikh Jarrah, in East Jerusalem.
They targeted at least two UNRWA buildings for demolition, and fired tear gas in a vocational school serving young refugees in Qalandia, on the outskirts of Jerusalem; the Palestinian Authority said that Israeli forces hit a 15-year-old boy in the eye with a rubber bullet.
An Israeli government official and lawmakers looked on in approval at the violence targeting the premises, which are protected under international law, UN officials said.
The attack is one of Israel’s single most extreme moves against UNRWA thus far, after killing 309 of its employees in Gaza amid the genocide and taking moves to ban and destroy the agency financially. It was condemned by UN officials.
“A new level of open and deliberate defiance of international law, including of the privileges and immunities of the United Nations, by the State of Israel,” said UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini. “This constitutes an unprecedented attack against a United Nations agency and its premises.”
Lazzarini noted that Israeli authorities are slated to cut off water and power to UNRWA buildings in coming weeks, including to facilities dedicated to health care and education.
“This is a direct result of legislation passed by the Israeli parliament in December, which stepped up existing anti-UNRWA laws adopted in 2024,” Lazzarini said. With Israel openly flouting its obligations as a UN member state, “International law has come under increasing attack for too long and is risking irrelevancy in the absence of response by Member States,” he went on.
The UN has not been using the facilities for months out of concerns of being targeted with violence by Israeli forces.
Israeli officials have said that the demolition was part of the state’s new law banning UNRWA in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, labelling it as a “terror” group without substantial evidence.
This is yet another one of Israel’s attacks on Palestinian life. UNRWA provides and coordinates life-saving assistance like food, water, and shelter, on top of providing services like schooling for Palestinian refugees in Palestine and beyond. Many Palestinians have credited their survival during the genocide to UNRWA.
Last week, Israeli police stormed an UNRWA health clinic in East Jerusalem, ordering it to close for 30 days. The health center serves hundreds of Palestinians each day, and is the “only possibility of having access to primary healthcare” for most of the patients, the UN said.
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