For Palestinians, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) is a critical lifeline, providing food, water and medicine to hundreds of thousands of Gazans who have suffered nearly 15 months of war, killing, destruction, starvation and forced displacement, The New York Times reported Thursday.

For the Israeli government, “UNRWA is a dangerous front for Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that led the surprise attack on Israel in 2023. Now, Israeli lawmakers have laid the groundwork to ban the agency by passing two bills set to go into effect this month,” the newspaper said.

If the Israeli occupation authorities implement the new laws, UN officials warn that no other group will be able to replace UNRWA and its crucial humanitarian operations in Gaza will cease at a time when experts say famine threatens much of the besieged and devastated territory.

UN officials say they are preparing to close UNRWA operations in both Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

“This would have a huge impact on an already catastrophic situation,” Jamie McGoldrick, who oversaw UN humanitarian operations in Gaza and the West Bank until April, was quoted as saying by the newspaper. “If this is the Israeli intention – to remove any ability for us to save lives – you have to ask what the thinking is and what the ultimate goal is?”

UNRWA, the main UN agency that helps Palestinians, stands apart from other agencies in the world body. Its 30,000 staff — most of them Palestinians — run schools, health clinics, vocational training centers, food banks and even garbage collection for six million Palestinians in Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the West Bank.

Since the start of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza 15 months ago, UNRWA has transformed itself into an anchor of the international aid response. With 5,000 workers on the ground (according to the agency’s figures), UNRWA oversees aid delivery, runs shelters and medical clinics, distributes food aid, removes garbage and human waste, and provides the fuel that powers hospitals, water wells, and virtually every other aid organization in Gaza.

“The world has abandoned us; we only have the aid we get from UNRWA to survive,” said Sami Abu Darwish, 30, who lives in a refugee camp in southern Gaza run by UNRWA. “If that stops, what will we do?” The relationship between Israel and UNRWA has been tense for decades. It was torn apart last year when Israel accused 18 of the agency’s employees of taking part in a Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. Israel also claimed that Hamas was using UNRWA schools to hide fighters, accusations that have been proven false.

A U.N. investigation found that nine staff members may have been involved in the attack on Israel and the agency fired them. U.N. officials reject most of Israel’s allegations and say the Israeli government has refused to share evidence with the agency.

The New York Times claims that its analysis of Hamas records shows that at least 24 members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, out of 13,000 employees (in Gaza alone), worked in UNRWA schools and facilities in the Strip.

In late October, the Israeli parliament voted overwhelmingly to pass legislation banning UNRWA from operating on Israeli territory. The ban is set to take effect this month, 90 days after the measures are passed.

There are a number of uncertainties surrounding exactly what will happen next. The legislation does not directly address the agency’s operations in Gaza or the West Bank, and the Israeli government has been vague about how or whether it plans to apply the new laws there.

Israel’s deputy foreign minister, Sharren Haskel, declined to elaborate on the government’s approach to UNRWA in the occupied territories when she spoke to reporters in late December three days ago. “She suggested only that Palestinian officials deal with UNRWA in the West Bank, while accusing the agency of harboring terrorists in Gaza,” according to the New York Times.

U.N. officials said they were preparing to shut down operations in both areas largely because laws would bar Israeli officials from interacting with UNRWA. The agency says it must coordinate with the Israeli military every time its workers deliver aid or move through Gaza and parts of the West Bank.

“If we are not able to share this information with the Israeli authorities on a daily basis, the lives of staff are at risk,” Louise Waterridge, a senior UNRWA official on the ground in Gaza, told the US press, adding that more than 250 UNRWA staff have already been killed in the Gaza war.

Israeli lawmakers behind the legislation have suggested they hope it will effectively banish the agency from Gaza and the West Bank. Some have said the 90-day deadline for the laws to take effect was intended to give time for other aid groups to take UNRWA’s place.

Agency officials say Israel is already moving away from cooperating with UNRWA, and that the Israeli military has prevented UNRWA from using the crossings between Israel and northern Gaza, an area where Israel has launched intense and deadly attacks in recent months.

Meanwhile, UNRWA aid shipments have been repeatedly looted in southern Gaza, prompting the agency to halt deliveries at one of the main southern border crossings since early December, deepening the despair of Palestinian citizens in Gaza.

Experts point out that basic supplies have recently become scarce, forcing citizens to wait in long queues to buy these essentials from vendors at prices several times higher than the normal price.

The United Nations established UNRWA in 1949 to assist approximately 750,000 Palestinians who became refugees in the war waged by Zionist organizations on Palestine to create Israel in 1948.

Many Israelis see the agency as perpetuating the conflict because generations of Palestinians have been allowed to inherit refugee status. Some Israelis also accuse UNRWA teachers of indoctrinating young Palestinians with the history of the conflict between the Palestinians and Israel, something the United Nations denies.

Since the laws banning UNRWA were passed, the Israeli government has continued to criticize the agency and has suggested that various aid groups are willing to take its place.

The United States is among the countries that pushed Israel to allow UNRWA to continue operating. Washington has long been the agency’s main funder, although it suspended donations in January 2024 in deference to Israeli accusations.

US officials have warned Israel of the danger of banning UNRWA, as the US State Department spokesman said in response to a question from a Al-Quds newspaper correspondent regarding the ban: “Banning UNRWA would destroy the humanitarian response in Gaza at this critical moment.”

UNRWA in Gaza has become central to the aid response in part because it was already embedded in the community. Before the war, UNRWA said its 288 schools were educating 300,000 students in Gaza, nearly half of the region’s school-age children, and its 22 medical clinics were handling 2.6 million patient visits a year.

UNRWA is also critical in parts of the West Bank, serving 900,000 Palestinians there, and UNRWA schools serve 50,000 students in the West Bank. Public schools elsewhere in the region – mostly run by the Palestinian Authority government – are already nearing breaking point, with 650,000 students.

Experts view UNRWA as a “witness to the Nakba (1948)” established in the aftermath of the Nakba with the aim of assisting Palestinian refugees “until their problem is resolved.” The agency relied on voluntary contributions from UN member states, and focused its activities on “education, health, healthcare and infrastructure.”

These people believe that the agency and its camps in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and outside them are living evidence of the crime of the age, which was represented by the Nakba resulting from the massacres and crimes committed by the Zionist gangs before the Nakba... and then the occupying state... after it.

In this context, Israel's previous claim to distort UNRWA's image came, and some countries responded to it, most notably the United States, without professional verification of the veracity of the Israeli narrative with the aim of eliminating the right of return, knowing that the agency has more than 30,000 employees.

It is noteworthy that agents of the Israeli lobby, the "AIPAC" organization and the "Foundation for Defense of Democracies" (a front for the Israeli occupation army in Washington), presented forged documents during the previous Donald Trump administration (2017-2021) to the US Congress, claiming that the real number of Palestinian refugees is 30,000 refugees in the process of canceling the right of return for Palestinian refugees.

Humanity in Gaza at this critical moment."

UNRWA in Gaza has become central to the aid response in part because it was already embedded in the community. Before the war, UNRWA said its 288 schools were educating 300,000 students in Gaza, nearly half of the region’s school-age children, and its 22 medical clinics were handling 2.6 million patient visits a year.

UNRWA is also critical in parts of the West Bank, serving 900,000 Palestinians there, and UNRWA schools serve 50,000 students in the West Bank. Public schools elsewhere in the region – mostly run by the Palestinian Authority government – are already nearing breaking point, with 650,000 students.

Experts view UNRWA as a “witness to the Nakba (1948)” established in the aftermath of the Nakba with the aim of assisting Palestinian refugees “until their problem is resolved.” The agency relied on voluntary contributions from UN member states, and focused its activities on “education, health, healthcare and infrastructure.”

These people believe that the agency and its camps in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and outside them are living evidence of the crime of the age, which was represented by the Nakba resulting from the massacres and crimes committed by the Zionist gangs before the Nakba... and then the occupying state... after it.

In this context, Israel's previous claim to distort UNRWA's image came, and some countries responded to it, most notably the United States, without professional verification of the veracity of the Israeli narrative with the aim of eliminating the right of return, knowing that the agency has more than 30,000 employees.

It is noteworthy that agents of the Israeli lobby, the "AIPAC" organization and the "Foundation for Defense of Democracies" (a front for the Israeli occupation army in Washington), presented forged documents during the previous Donald Trump administration (2017-2021) to the US Congress, claiming that the real number of Palestinian refugees is 30,000 refugees in the process of canceling the right of return for Palestinian refugees.