The UN General Assembly on Friday endorsed the International Court of Justice’s view that allegations of Hamas infiltration of the agency are unsubstantiated, in a vote hailed by the organization’s chief as “a strong endorsement” of its neutrality.
“The UN General Assembly has given a strong endorsement to the ruling by the International Court of Justice that claims about UNRWA being infiltrated by Hamas are not substantiated, nor are allegations that UNRWA is not a neutral organization,” UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini wrote on X, adding that the vote is “an important sign of support for UNRWA from the overwhelming majority of the international community.”
Citing the ICJ, he said UNRWA is “the key humanitarian actor in the occupied Palestinian territory,” urging member states to support its work in Gaza and expand “critical public health and education services.”
As part of its recent non-binding advisory opinion, the ICJ also asserted that Israel is legally obligated to allow UNWRA to provide humanitarian aid in Gaza, and stated that the provision of aid to the Strip during the war there has been inadequate.
Lazzarini and other UN officials have touted UNRWA as the backbone of the aid response in Gaza, though Israel and the Trump administration have accused the agency of links with Hamas, allegations the agency has vigorously disputed. Israel has published evidence of UNRWA employees taking part in the October 7, 2023, onslaught and in taking and guarding hostages, as well as accusing the agency’s school of consistently glorifying terrorism and opposing the State of Israel’s right to exist.
“UNRWA = hotbed of terrorism,” Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, wrote on X in response to Friday’s vote.
Danon accused the General Assembly of passing “a resolution calling on Israel to cooperate with terrorism,” adding, “That will not happen.”
He referenced a video published in February 2024 from the Hamas-led October 7 massacre, in which an an UNRWA employee can be seen abducting Yonatan Samerano’s body from Israel into the back of an SUV.
“We will not forget the crimes against humanity committed by UNRWA workers on October 7th,” Danon added. “We will not forget that an UNRWA ‘social worker’ kidnapped Yonatan Samerano’s lifeless body to Gaza. For the sake of peace in the world, UNRWA must go.”
The US State Department also denounced the vote, calling the resolution “unserious and biased, demonstrating the continued prevalence of anti-Israel bias over substantive diplomacy” at the United Nations.
“The United States stands with Israel in rejecting this notion entirely,” the State Department added in a statement. “Moreover, the United States refutes every effort to empower UNRWA, a Hamas subsidiary that was complicit in the atrocities of October 7, is devoid of meaningful oversight, and continues to promote antisemitism and glorify terrorism. It is unaccountable, corrupt, and will have absolutely no place in Gaza.”
In addition to the General Assembly vote, the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, the UAE, Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey and Qatar issued a joint statement on Friday “affirming the indispensable role of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) in protecting the rights of Palestinian refugees and caring for their affairs.”
The statement came against the backdrop of an Israeli raid on UNRWA’s headquarters in East Jerusalem and reports that the US is looking into designating the UN agency as a terror group due to its ties to Hamas.
Israel has long sought to shutter UNRWA, saying it perpetuates the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by continuing to confer refugee status on descendants of Arabs who left their homes in what is now Israel during the War of Independence from 1947 to 1949.
It ramped up its campaign against the agency after evidence showed that employees of the agency had participated in the October 7 attack and had incited against it, passing legislation last year banning UNRWA from operating within Israeli territory.
Israel has also alleged that more than 10 percent of UNRWA’s staff in Gaza have ties to terrorist factions, and that educational facilities under the organization’s auspices consistently incite hatred of Israel and glorify terror.
Agencies contributed to this report.
