Israeli police forcibly entered Jerusalem compound: UN Palestinian aid agency

Israeli police stormed the East Jerusalem headquarters of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees before dawn on Monday, forcing their way into the sealed compound in what UN officials denounced as an extraordinary breach of diplomatic protections.

The raid marked a dramatic escalation in Israel’s steadily intensifying campaign to sideline — and ultimately dismantle — the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which has already been banned from operating on Israeli territory.

According to UNRWA, “sizeable numbers” of Israeli forces arrived in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood on motorbikes, trucks and even forklifts, before cutting the compound’s communications and forcing entry. The agency said the operation was carried out without authorisation and constituted a direct violation of the privileges and immunities afforded to UN bodies under international law.

Photographs taken by an Associated Press photographer showed police vehicles clustered outside the building and an Israeli flag planted on its roof. Images provided by UNRWA staff captured officers walking through the interior courtyard of the compound — a site the agency had closed months earlier after being overrun by far-right protesters.

Israeli police later claimed they were executing a “debt-collection procedure” on behalf of Jerusalem’s municipal authorities. City officials did not respond to press queries seeking clarification, and UNRWA dismissed the justification as yet another political move against an agency long targeted by the Israeli government.

Monday’s raid is the latest step in a broader campaign to weaken or eliminate UNRWA, which supports roughly 2.5 million Palestinian refugees in Gaza, the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, and an additional 3 million in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan.

Created in 1949 to serve Palestinians displaced during the 1948 war, the agency has for decades been at the centre of a wider political struggle: supporters say Israel seeks to dismantle UNRWA to make the refugee question disappear, while Israel insists the refugees must be permanently resettled elsewhere.

Throughout the Israel–Hamas war that erupted on 7 October 2023, UNRWA was Gaza’s primary humanitarian lifeline, operating shelters, distributing food and providing basic services as Israeli bombardment and tight controls on goods pushed the enclave to the brink of collapse.

Israel has repeatedly accused the agency of being infiltrated by Hamas — allegations the UN rejects — and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government formally outlawed UNRWA’s presence on Israeli territory in January.

The United States, once the agency’s largest donor, suspended its funding in early 2024, deepening an already severe financial crisis.

Since being barred from operating in Israel and starved of key funding streams, UNRWA has struggled to sustain its operations in Gaza. Other UN bodies, including the World Food Programme and UNICEF, have tried to fill the vacuum, but agency officials warn that no humanitarian structure can replicate UNRWA’s size, reach or institutional memory.

“If you squeeze UNRWA out, what other agency can fill that void?” asked Tamara Alrifai, the organisation’s chief of external relations, speaking at the Doha Forum on Saturday. She noted that UNRWA had also been excluded from US-led negotiations over the next stage of ceasefire planning — a decision that she said would have profound humanitarian consequences.

The Jerusalem compound targeted on Monday had already been closed since May after far-right activists, including at least one member of the Knesset, forced their way in amid minimal police intervention. Some figures in Israel’s governing coalition have openly advocated transforming the site into a settlement. Last year, Israel’s housing minister said he had ordered officials to “examine how to return the area to the state of Israel and utilise it for housing” — a statement widely interpreted as a precursor to expropriation.

Monday’s intrusion, UNRWA officials warned, suggests that pressure on the agency is likely to intensify further, even as its services remain indispensable to millions of displaced and impoverished Palestinians.

With AP/PTI inputs