Israel orders UNRWA to vacate its East Jerusalem headquarters within 30 days

The Israel Land Authority (ATI) has informed the UN Palestinian Refugee Agency (UNRWA) that it must vacate its headquarters in occupied East Jerusalem within 30 days, after approving the claim of Israel’s Housing Minister, the ultra-Orthodox Yitzhak Goldknopf .

In a letter sent to UNRWA on Tuesday, ATI wrote that the agency owes it more than 27 million shekels (about 7 million euros) for operating on Israeli-owned land “without authorization for the past seven years “, according to Hebrew media report.

Minister Goldknopf reported that the measure, which he himself had first requested from the ATI in February, had been given the green light by his ministry’s legal advisor.

He further told the agency that it is “obligatory to immediately stop any illegal use, destroy anything built in violation of the law, vacate the land of any person or object and dispose of it within 30 days from the date of the letter return to ATI. .”

“If you do not comply with this, ATI reserves the right to respond by all legal means and you will be required to bear the costs involved. No other alert will be sent,” the letter added.

UNRWA, created to deal with Palestinian refugees who fled or were driven from their homes during the 1948 war after Israel’s creation, has long been a target of Israeli hostility.

Since the start of the war in the Gaza Strip, UNRWA has been in the crosshairs of Israel, which accused a dozen of the organization’s employees of participating in the October 7 Hamas attacks and claims that more than 200 employees have ties to Islamists; and does not conceal his intention of closing it.

In recent weeks, extremist Israelis have attacked UNRWA headquarters in occupied East Jerusalem several times, forcing the organization to temporarily close its headquarters.

These accusations caused many donor countries to cut funding to UNRWA last January, although most resumed it in the absence of conclusive evidence from Israel.