United Nations has long said UNRWA is irreplaceable, but lawyer for Palestinians who received its services admits agency can be legally bypassed

During an Israeli High Court of Justice hearing this week, a judge asked Suhad Bishara, a lawyer for recipients of United Nations Relief and Works Agency aid and services, who say that recent Israeli legislation barring UNRWA operations in Israel has harmed them, if the Jewish state is obligated legally to cooperate with UNRWA.

The United Nations and others have said that the agency is the only one that can provide for Palestinian needs, and that Israel has violated international law by restricting its operations, and by criminalizing communication between Israeli and UNRWA officials. The global body was among those to decry efforts of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to deliver supplies directly to Palestinians without Hamas interference.

Asked if Israel could legally work with another entity, besides UNRWA, to secure essential services in the Gaza Strip, the lawyer said that the relevant Israeli legislation did not immediately provide enough UNRWA alternatives but that a different U.N. agency could legally provide adequate services.

Israel has presented evidence that UNRWA staffers participated directly in the Oct. 7 terror attacks and that Palestinian terrorists and those with ties to Palestinian terror were employed at the U.N. agency.

JNS asked Farhan Haq, a spokesman for António Guterres, secretary-general of the United Nations, during a press briefing on Monday about the U.N. view on Bishara’s legal analysis.

“Our position has always been that the work of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency is vital to our humanitarian efforts and our efforts in terms of dealing with the local population throughout” Palestinian-controlled territory, “as well as in neighboring countries,” Haq said.

“We have called for all to respect that,” he told JNS.

The U.N. spokesman did not dispute Bishara’s professional opinion that an alternative could legally replace UNRWA in delivering services to Palestinians.

At the U.N. briefing, Haq referred JNS to a non-binding, October 2025 advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice, in which the principal U.N. judicial body based in The Hague states that Israel is obligated “to agree to and facilitate by all means at its disposal relief schemes.”

Those schemes include “relief provided by the United Nations and its entities, in particular the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, other international organizations and third states, and not to impede such relief,” the opinion states.

The court qualified the decision. The obligation only exists “so long as that population is inadequately supplied,” the opinion states.

The U.N. court also stated that its non-binding opinion is that Israel “has an obligation to cooperate in good faith with the United Nations by providing every assistance in any action it takes in accordance with the charter of the United Nations, including the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East.”

JNS sought clarification from the International Court of Justice.

“As a matter of practice, the court does not comment on advisory opinions it has issued,” a spokesman for the court told JNS.

The Israeli High Court expressed much skepticism that any of the petitioners, who previously received UNRWA aid and services, could prove based on the evidence provided that they had been harmed by the Israeli laws. It urged the plaintiffs to withdraw their case and provided them with 10 days to respond.

Eugene Kontorovich, a law professor at George Mason University and a senior legal fellow at the Advancing American Freedom Foundation, told JNS that there is no international law that says that Israel lacks “a right to kick out and stop working with UNRWA any time it wants.”

“That’s exactly what Israel did,” Kontorovich said. “Moreover, it’s not even obligated to work with any U.N. agency, only to ensure that certain humanitarian needs are met.”

The legal scholar told JNS that the Board of Peace, which U.S. President Donald Trump created and which a U.N. Security Council resolution backs, has now shouldered that responsibility.

“At this point, in terms of Gaza, that obligation now falls on the Board of Peace,” Kontorovich said. “Not on Israel.”

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