Now that there is a ceasefire agreement in place in Gaza, much-needed aid deliveries have started arriving. Media reports say around 1,500 trucks carrying aid entered Gaza since Sunday and many more are to follow.

Representatives from the United Nations agency responsible for Palestinians, known as UNRWA, said they were helping with deliveries. However, the flow of aid may soon be disrupted again.

UNRWA is the largest aid organization working in Gaza, often described as the "backbone" of all humanitarian operations there. Staff do everything from work in warehouses and medical clinics to delivering fuel, teaching and collecting garbage.

But in just over a week, UNRWA's ability to operate in Gaza and other occupied Palestinian territories will be crippled by two Israeli laws passed last October. One designates UNRWA as a "terror" group and forbids Israeli officials from any contact with it. The other prevents UNRWA from providing services inside Israel.

Israel claims that some UNRWA staff are affiliated with the militant group Hamas. Israel has also said around a dozen of UNRWA's around 13,000 staff in Gaza took part in the October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, which killed around 1,200 people. Since then, an Israeli military campaign against Hamas has killed over 46,000 people in Gaza.

The Israeli claims were not independently verified, although UNRWA preemptively dismissed nine employees anyway.

History of hostility

The Israeli laws can also partially be seen as the result of the increasingly hostile relationship between Israel and UNRWA.

Israel has long been opposed to the broader role UNRWA plays for Palestinians and has been accusing the UN agency of Hamas connections for more than 10 years. 

Established in 1949 to deal with Palestinians displaced by the 1948 war that led to Israel's founding, UNRWA acts like a kind of state for stateless Palestinians, providing services like education and healthcare.

According to Israeli politicians, though, UNRWA is preventing what they see as realistic answers to questions around Palestinian refugees by recognizing the children of Palestinians also as refugees and by representing those refugees' desire for the "right to return" to areas they and their families were forced to leave. 

"Much of Israel's political class rejects UNRWA," said Daniel Forti, an expert on the UN at Brussels-based think tank International Crisis Group, in a 2024 briefing. "They argue that any entity that stands for the preservation of the Palestinians' right of return directly threatens the Israeli state's existence."

What next?

The new Israeli laws come into effect 90 days after they were passed, so by the end of January.

And despite the concerns of Israel's allies, including Germany and the United Kingdom, the UNRWA ban will likely go ahead.

"One of the problems is that the reaction to this has been rhetorical rather than any serious political engagement," said Jorgen Jensehaugen, a senior researcher at Norway's Peace Research Institute Oslo. "Israel is hell-bent on pushing this through, and I think they feel they have [US President Donald] Trump on board, too."

Details of how the laws might directly impact the situation on the ground are unclear, although observers say Gaza will be hardest hit.

"The situation will become difficult to say the least," Jensehaugen told DW. "The hope is that more aid will come flooding in with the ceasefire. But since UNRWA is the main operational agency, coordination becomes difficult as UNRWA falls apart."

"If we can't operate then we are looking at the real risk that this much needed scale-up [of aid] won't be able to happen at the speed and size required," UNRWA spokesperson Jonathan Fowler told DW.

UNRWA says it won't be able to coordinate its movements with the Israeli military anymore, which puts its staff in danger. Visas and other permissions for staff will also expire, and UNRWA's bank accounts will be frozen. One UNRWA account, with $3 million (€2.9 million) in it, already was. 

Israel says the 90-day deadline allowed other organizations, like the World Food Program, World Health Organization and other private aid organizations, to prepare to take UNRWA's place.

If other bodies see Israel is serious, they will replace UNRWA, an anonymous security official told Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

"Until the war, UNRWA held a monopoly on municipal services in Gaza, " the official said. "Now other organizations will take on more responsibility."

Palestinian employees could also be transferred to other UN organizations, like the UN Development Program, Haaretz reported.

Israeli authorities have not explained how the law would work inside the occupied Palestinian territories as opposed to Israel. But Israeli media have reported plans to convert UNRWA's compound in occupied East Jerusalem into housing units, as well as taking over UNRWA schools and health clinics there.

Legal repercussions

There are also other, indirect impacts of Israel's ban on UNRWA.

If UNRWA disappears, then Israel — as the occupying power — would be responsible for social services to the Palestinians, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has argued. Israel's ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, denies his country is the occupying power — that's despite the fact that many prominent international institutions, including the EU and the International Criminal Court, say it is.

If UNRWA is dismantled, it would also change the Palestinians' refugee status. For example, previously they couldn't claim asylum in Europe because UNRWA was protecting them. But, as the European Court of Justice said in June 2024, if UNRWA was unable to offer protection, Palestinians could potentially seek it elsewhere.

The UN's refugee agency, UNHCR, might become responsible for them, Jensehaugen of the Peace Research Institute, suggested. This could actually expand Palestinians' rights in some ways, he noted, which is why one former UNRWA spokesperson described it as an "own goal" for Israel in a recent op-ed.

The end of UNRWA may also send a meaningful signal to international jurists.

"Of course, Israel also has security interests and must protect itself from terrorism," Matthias Goldmann, chair of international law at EBS, a private German university, told specialist publication, Legal Tribune Online, in November.

"But I do not think it is proportionate to expose the entire civilian population to such serious risks given the thin evidence," he was cited as saying.

It is difficult to prove in court that genocide is being committed because accusers need to show a pattern of behavior.

Goldmann warned against jumping to any conclusions but concluded that, "the UNRWA ban is another piece of the puzzle that fits into a 'pattern of conduct,' a behavior pattern indicating an intent to destroy, such as the [UN's] International Court of Justice requires for genocide." 

Edited by: Kate Hairsine