Guterres: Knesset bill blocking UNRWA in Israel 'would be a disaster'

Two bills in the Knesset that would block UNRWA's activities in Israel if passed into law "would be a catastrophe," said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday. 

He further asserted that the UNRWA has been "indispensable" in the midst of the Israel-Hamas War in Gaza. 

“That’s why I have written directly to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to express profound concern about draft legislation that could prevent UNRWA from continuing its essential work in the Occupied Palestinian Territory,” he said at the Security Council stakeout in New York, referencing his appeal to Netanyahu last week to stop the bills. 

Guterres's statements come after the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee approved the two bills on Monday so that they could move on to the plenum for their second and third readings. 

Guterres believes that if passed, they will cause a "catastrophe in what is already an unmitigated disaster.”

.@UNRWA - more than ever - is indispensable.@UNRWA - more than ever - is irreplaceable. pic.twitter.com/NH3ufwx3Rg

— António Guterres (@antonioguterres) October 8, 2024

'An enormous setback'

Both bills amalgamate other bills proposed by MKs from the coalition and the opposition. They were proposed in response to reports that UNWRA workers participated in the October 7 massacre and held Israeli hostages captive. The reports further alleged that UNRWA facilities in Gaza were used doubly to store ammunition and arms and that the UNRWA education system incited violence against Israel.

FADC chairman MK Yuli Edelstein wrote in a statement following the bill’s approval in his committee, “The problem of the UNWRA did not begin on October 7, but it arose and was revealed in all of its Satanism” on that day, according to previous reporting by The Jerusalem Post. 

Guterres said that if the bills are approved, such legislation would violate international law, which national legislation cannot alter. 

 “And politically, such legislation would be an enormous setback to sustainable peace efforts and a two-State solution – fanning even more instability and insecurity,” he said. 

“The conclusion is clear:  there is something fundamentally wrong in the way this war is being conducted," he said. “The Middle East is a powder keg with many parties holding the match," which is "getting worse by the hour."