On January 30, two new Israeli laws will go into effect intended to prevent the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) from operating in areas under Israel’s control. The proximate cause for the legislation is the widespread participation of UNRWA employees in the October 7 attacks, and the determination that over 2,000 of them are also members of Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad. But Israelis have also come to realize a far more serious problem: the group’s purpose is to prolong the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Worse still, in Gaza—as Shany Mor has written—UNRWA takes the responsibilities of education and welfare out of the hands of Hamas, allowing it to focus entirely on terror.

Maurice Hirsch explains how this new law will work:

UNRWA operates in Israel, Gaza, Judea, and Samaria at the invitation of Israel. Following [its] request, Israel provided UNRWA with a status similar to that of other UN organizations. These special privileges include substantial tax exemptions, special UNRWA-registered vehicles, and foreign staff. Israel even turned a blind eye to building infractions in UNRWA’s main logistical compound in Jerusalem.

The legislation, passed by the Knesset, to which the government must adhere, is very clear: as of January 30, 2025, UNRWA will no longer be able to function in Israel, Gaza, Judea, or Samaria. The agency will no longer enjoy tax exemptions or other trappings associated with being a recognized organization.

Despite having been given sufficient notice, terror-infested UNRWA is refusing to wrap up its operations and transfer its functions to other actors. By its actions, it would seem that UNRWA believes that it can force itself upon Israel, irrespective of the new legislation.

By refusing to accept this reality and smoothly pass its functions onto an appropriate alternate body, UNRWA is again doing a disservice to the people to whom it provides services.

As this newsletter noted last week, Gaza is not suffering from famine, and the efforts to suggest that it is—which have been going on since at least the beginning of last year—are based on deliberate manipulation of the data. Nor, as Shany Mor explains, does international law require Israel to feed its enemies:

Article 23 of the Fourth Geneva Convention does oblige High Contracting Parties to allow for the free passage of medical and religious supplies along with “essential foodstuff, clothing, and tonics intended for children under fifteen” for the civilians of another High Contracting Party, as long as there is no serious reason for fearing that “the consignments may be diverted from their destination,” or “that a definite advantage may accrue to the military efforts or economy of the enemy” by the provision.

The Hamas regime in Gaza is, of course, not a High Contracting Party, and, more importantly, Israel has reason to fear both that aid provisions are diverted by Hamas and that a direct advantage is accrued to it by such diversions. Not only does Hamas take provisions for its own forces, but its authorities sell provisions donated by foreign bodies and use the money to finance its war. It’s notable that the first reports of Hamas’s financial difficulties emerged only in the past few weeks, once provisions were blocked.

Yet, since the war began, even European states considered friendly to Israel have repeatedly demanded that Israel “allow unhindered passage of humanitarian aid” and refrain from seizing territory or imposing “demographic change”—which means, in practice, that Gazan civilians can’t seek refuge abroad. These principles don’t merely constitute a separate system of international law that applies only to Israel, but prolong the suffering of the people they are ostensibly meant to protect:

By insisting that Hamas can’t lose any territory in the war it launched, the international community has invented a norm that never before existed and removed one of the few levers Israel has to pressure it to end the war and release the hostages.

These commitments have . . . made the plight of the hostages much worse and much longer. They made the war much longer than necessary and much deadlier for both sides. And they locked a large civilian population in a war zone where the de-facto governing authority was not only indifferent to civilian losses on its own side, but actually had much to gain by it.