(JNS) The U.N. Relief and Works Agency’s field office in the Ma’alot Dafna neighborhood of Jerusalem has been cleared out but its neighborhood facilities kept operating on the first day that Israeli law banned the entity from operating in Israel, according to Stéphane Dujarric, spokesman for António Guterres, the U.N. secretary-general.
“What I know from the conversations I’ve had is that there is very little news to report. There was, in front of our headquarters in the Sheikh Jarrah area, there was a small demonstration early this morning that disbanded very quickly,” Dujarric told reporters during a press briefing on Thursday. “What my colleague told me is that there were more reporters than demonstrators.”
Though vacated, the building still flies the flag of the United Nations, Dujarric said. He added that staff emptied the facility of files, computers and vehicles, and the roughly 50 international staff members, who no longer held valid Israeli visas, went to Jordan. (The U.N. flag has reportedly been taken down and replaced with an Israeli one.)
“My understanding is that the headquarters building is empty of staff. There is some security office, security guards—civilian, unarmed local security company that we contract with that are there,” Dujarric said, “but the UNRWA staff is doing what it should be doing, which is working in the clinics and other other places they work in the region.”
“The humanitarian operation in Gaza continues, including with UNRWA’s work there,” he added. “UNRWA says that it is committed to staying and delivering.”
Two UNRWA schools in Jerusalem are still operating, and the U.N. agency continues to administer operations in the Shuafat neighborhood, which it considers a refugee camp.
JNS asked Dujarric at the press conference if UNRWA has received any updated directives given the new circumstances on the ground.
“The directive is that UNRWA will continue to do its work until it no longer can, which is what is going on today,” he told JNS. “There are no instructions or directives for UNRWA not to work in close cooperation with other U.N. agencies. They are part of the U.N.’s humanitarian system, whether in Gaza or in other places.”
Two new Israeli laws, which passed in October and went into effect on Jan. 30, bar UNRWA from operating in Israel and ban Israeli officials from communicating with staff at the U.N. agency.
JNS asked Dujarric if the United Nations formulated any contingency plan for UNRWA’s responsibilities, given the amount of time that the global body had to prepare for the agency being banned on Thursday.
“I’m not saying that we’re not aware of the general situation,” the U.N. spokesman told JNS. “What I’m telling you is—what I can speak to today is—that UNRWA is continuing its work.”
The global body has long claimed that no other agency can replace UNRWA’s work, especially in facilitating humanitarian aid delivery in Gaza. (There were earlier, unconfirmed reports that Guterres told UNRWA and other U.N. agencies to avoid cooperating with other entities for fear of verifying Israel’s claim that others can assume the agency’s responsibilities.)
Israel has said that UNRWA staff have ties to Gazan terror groups and has publicized evidence of staff at the U.N. agency participating directly in the Hamas-led terrorist attacks on Oct. 7, 2023.
The United Nations says the Jewish state has no right to close UNRWA facilities, which are located in the eastern part of Jerusalem in what the United Nations calls occupied territory. Israel liberated that part of the city from Jordan in June 1967 during the Six-Day War and officially took sovereignty over the entire city in 1980.
