Israel’s Knesset on Wednesday passed in preliminary reading a bill designating the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) as a terrorist organization.
The draft legislation, initiated by Yisrael Beiteinu lawmaker Yulia Malinovsky, would require Jerusalem to sever all ties with the U.N. agency.
If passed into law, the bill “will allow for a complete dissociation from the agency—no cooperation, no trade, nothing,” Malinovsky told JNS.
“For years this organization has been cooperating with Hamas, and on October 7 even actively participated in the murder, kidnapping and rape of Israeli citizens,” she said. “Today was the first step on the way to completing the legislation so that UNRWA is finally outlawed and defined as a terrorist organization,” she added.
Also passed in preliminary reading on Wednesday was a bill initiated by Likud MK Dan Illouz that seeks to strip UNRWA of various immunities, involving among other things taxation, imports and exports and lawsuits.
“This is an essential law for our national security. After October 7, we cannot continue as if nothing happened,” Illouz told JNS. “We cannot allow the terror supporting organization UNRWA to operate against us. We are fighting for our security and our future and UNRWA cannot pretend to be a humanitarian entity while harming us. That ends today.”
After the bills were passed, Yisrael Beiteinu chairman Avigdor Liberman tweeted: “UNRWA is a terrorist organization.” He praised Malinovsky for “leading the important initiative to legislate a law to define UNRWA as a terrorist organization. ”
He called on “all the Zionist factions in the Knesset to act together with us” to pass it into law “as soon as possible.”
UNRWA has come under fire since the start of the war on Oct. 7 for its terror ties.
In February, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told journalists that 30 UNRWA employees had participated in Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre, and that 1,468 of the agency’s 13,000 staff members in Gaza were members of Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad. He also shared the names and photos of 12 UNRWA employees Israel had accused in January of taking part in the massacre.
In January, a comprehensive report published by U.N. Watch revealed the existence of a Telegram group for UNRWA teachers in Gaza in which many glorified the massacre and advocated the execution of Israeli hostages.
“This is the motherlode of UNRWA teachers’ incitement to jihadi terrorism,” said U.N. Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer at the time.
Per the Knesset’s legislative processes, the two bills will now be assigned to committees, where their details will be ironed out prior to first, second and third readings.