Police have raised the Israeli flag over the global organization’s office in East Jerusalem
The UN has condemned Israel’s raid on the headquarters of the organization’s agency for Palestinian refugees in East Jerusalem.
According to the Times of Israel, police and tax officials entered the UNRWA office on Monday as part of what they described as an operation to seize assets over unpaid municipal property taxes. UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said officials seized “furniture, IT equipment, and other property.”
During the raid, police removed the UN flag and raised the Israeli flag over the compound.
“Yesterday’s storming of UNRWA’s East Jerusalem compound by Israeli police and taking control – including by replacing the UN flag with the Israeli one – creates a dangerous precedent,” Lazzarini wrote on X on Tuesday. “This should be a wake-up call. What happens today to UNRWA can happen tomorrow to any other international organization or diplomatic mission, around the world,” he added.
Watch: Israeli flag flies on roof of UNRWA headquarters in Jerusalem@UNRWA headquarters in Jerusalem, which have been inactive since the organization was banned in Israel, had an Israeli flag hoisted atop the building. pic.twitter.com/BnTWirphRf
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres condemned the operation, saying that UN offices were “inviolable and immune from any other form of interference.”
Israel banned UNRWA activities in October 2024, accusing the agency of secretly aiding and providing cover for Hamas – an allegation the UN denies.
Jerusalem Deputy Mayor Arieh King defended the raid, arguing that UNRWA was not allowed to operate in East Jerusalem, which the UN considers an occupied Palestinian territory. “If it’s against the law, the law needs to be enforced,” King told the Press Service of Israel. He added that “people need to remember that UNRWA was involved in the terror attack and massacres of October 7,” referring to the Hamas assault in 2023 that triggered the war in Gaza.
Although the UN rejects Israel’s broader claim that the agency was “infiltrated by Hamas,” its own investigation in 2024 concluded that at least nine UNRWA staffers may have been involved in the October 7 attack.
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