JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel's parliament is scheduled to vote Monday on a pair of bills that would effectively sever ties with the U.N. agency responsible for distributing aid in Gaza, strip it of legal immunities and restrict its ability to support Palestinians in east Jerusalem and the West Bank.
If passed into law, these bills would signal a new low in relations between Israel and the agency known as UNRWA, which Israel accuses of maintaining close ties with Hamas militants. The changes would also be a serious blow to the agency and to Palestinians in Gaza who have become reliant upon it for aid throughout more than a year of devastating war.
The bills risk crippling the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza at a time when the United States is pressing Israel to allow in more critical supplies. More than 1.9 million Palestinians are displaced from their homes and Gaza faces widespread shortages of food, water and medicine.
Israel has alleged that some of UNRWA’s thousands of staff members participated in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas’ attacks that sparked the war in Gaza. It also has said hundreds of its staff have militant ties and that it has found Hamas military assets near or under UNRWA facilities. The agency denies it knowingly aids armed groups and says it acts quickly to purge any suspected militants from its ranks.
The bills, which do not include provisions for alternative organizations to oversee its work, have been strongly criticized by international aid groups and a handful of Israel's Western allies.
One bill would effectively strip UNRWA from operating in Israel and the Palestinian territories; the other would bar it from operating in east Jerusalem. UNRWA provides education, health care and other basic services to millions of Palestinian refugees across the region, including in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
If approved, the bills would go into effect 60 to 90 days after Israel’s Foreign Ministry notifies the U.N., according to the spokesperson of lawmaker Dan Illouz, one of the co-sponsors of one of the bills.
“If it passes and if it’s implemented, it’s a disaster” said Juliette Touma, communications director for the agency. “UNRWA is the largest humanitarian organization in Gaza ... Who can do its job?”
With no end in sight to the war, officials in Gaza reported Monday that the death toll from the yearlong fighting surpassed 43,000. The Palestinian Health Ministry's count does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but it says more than half of the dead are women and children.
The rising death toll comes as Israel refocuses its offensive on Gaza's hard-hit north, including on a hospital where the military says militants were operating from.
Israeli forces raided the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza on Friday. An Israeli military official, speaking Monday on condition of anonymity in keeping with regulations, said there was heavy fighting around the hospital, though not inside it, and that weapons were found inside the facility. The military said Monday the raid had ended.
Israel has raided several hospitals in Gaza over the course of the yearlong war, saying Hamas and other militants use them for military purposes. Palestinian medical officials deny those allegations and accuse the military of recklessly endangering civilians.
The Israeli military said it detained 100 suspected Hamas militants in the latest raid. The Israeli official said medical staff were detained and searched because some of the militants had disguised themselves as medics.
The World Health Organization accused Israel of detaining 44 male hospital staff. It was not immediately clear why there was a discrepancy in the figures. Palestinian medical officials said the hospital, which was treating some 200 patients, was heavily damaged in the raid.
The Israeli military has called on Palestinians to evacuate northern Gaza, where it has been waging a large offensive for more than three weeks. The official said the operation in the northern Gaza city of Jabaliya would last “several more weeks.”
The U.N. said earlier this month at least 400,000 people are in northern Gaza, an area that was an early target of Israel's retaliatory war. Hunger there is rampant as the amount of humanitarian aid reaching the north has plummeted over the past month.
The Israel-Hamas war began after militants from Hamas and other groups stormed into Israel, killing some 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and abducting 250 others. The war has roiled the Middle East, setting off fighting between Israel and Hezbollah as well as between Israel and Iran, archenemies who had long kept their conflict a shadow war but are now engaging in open fighting.
In Lebanon, successive Israeli airstrikes have pummeled the southern port city of Tyre following an evacuation order from the Israeli military for parts of the city, the state-run National News Agency reported. No casualties were immediately reported.
Reverberations from Israel's strike on Iran over the weekend were felt Monday in global financial markets. Oil prices fell in a sign of relief for world supplies after Israel's retaliatory strike targeted Iranian military sites rather than its energy infrastructure, as had been feared.
Oil prices had spiked after Iran fired nearly 200 missiles into Israel on Oct 1, part of a series of rapidly escalating attacks between Israel and Iran — and militant groups it supports — that threatened to push the Middle East closer to a regionwide war.
Iran is the world’s 7th largest oil producer, but if the conflict in the Middle East were to spread, it could drag in some of the world’s largest energy producers.
It is unclear how Iran could respond to Israel’s weekend strike, which damaged at least two secretive Iranian military bases. A carefully worded statement from Iran’s military Saturday night appeared to offer some wiggle room for the Islamic Republic to back away from further escalation. It suggested that a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon was more important than any retaliation against Israel.
After collapsing in late summer, international mediators were trying to jump-start cease-fire efforts between Israel and Hamas. Israel said it would continue discussions on a halt in fighting after the head of the Mossad agency, David Barnea, returned from a meeting in Qatar with the head of the CIA, David Burns, and the Qatari prime minister.
Mediators are trying varying proposals to try to bring Israel and Hamas toward a deal. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi has suggested a two-day cease-fire in exchange for the release of four hostages.
Israel appeared responsive to the idea. One Israeli official said Israel was discussing the proposal both internally and with Egyptian officials. A second official said that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed enthusiasm for the proposal in a meeting with his Likud party on Monday.
Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss internal deliberations about the proposal with the media.
Hamas has yet to formally respond to the plan and Hamas officials were not reachable for comment on Monday.
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Magdy reported from Cairo. Associated Press writers Michelle Chapman in New York and Julia Frankel and Tia Goldenberg in Jerusalem contributed.
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