Israel began demolishing UNRWA’s headquarters in East Jerusalem on Tuesday, following the passage of a law banning the UN agency’s work with Palestinian refugees.
Police arrived at the site with bulldozers and earth-moving equipment, along with Israeli Land Authority enforcement officers, and began demolishing the site, according to footage obtained by CNN. The Israel Land Authority said in a statement that law enforcement “secured full possession of the land and began clearing the site.”
UNRWA condemned the move as an “unprecedented attack on United Nations agencies and their facilities.” The agency wrote to X that this represented “a new level of open and deliberate defiance by the State of Israel of international law, including United Nations privileges and immunities.”
The United Nations Convention on Privileges and Immunities, to which Israel joined in 1949, states that United Nations facilities and installations are “inviolable” and “immune from search, requisition, confiscation, expropriation and all other forms of interference, whether executive, administrative, judicial or legislative.”
Israel captured East Jerusalem from Jordan in the 1967 war and annexed it in 1980. International law and most of the international community consider the territory to be occupied, and the Palestinians want to make East Jerusalem the capital of a future independent state. Israel considers the entire city its “eternal capital.”
“The Jerusalem site is owned by the State of Israel,” Israel’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement, adding that UNRWA had already ceased operations at the site and the United Nations no longer maintains personnel or operations there.
“This facility does not have any immunity and the seizure was carried out in accordance with both Israeli and international law,” the ministry said, calling UNRWA “a hothouse of terrorism that has long since ceased to be a humanitarian organization.”
Israel has had longstanding problems with UNRWA, accusing it of supporting Hamas and calling for its complete disbandment, an allegation UNRWA has repeatedly denied. After the Hamas-led attack on October 7, the government stepped up its attacks on UN agencies, citing the involvement of some UN agency staff and the use of UN facilities in Gaza to attack Israel and hide Israeli hostages.
In late 2024, Israel’s parliament passed a law banning UNRWA’s operations in Israel and prohibiting official contact with the agency. Further legislation in December 2025 prohibited providing water and electricity to UNRWA sites and allowing the state to reclaim land from UNRWA sites in East Jerusalem. Another UNRWA facility in East Jerusalem’s Kfar Aqab area is expected to undergo a similar process in the near future.
Far-right Minister of State Security Itamar Ben Gvir, who arrived at the scene following the police evacuation and vandalism, said: “Today is a historic day, a day of celebration, an important day for the restoration of rule in Jerusalem. These terrorist sponsors have been operating here for many years, and today they are being removed along with everything they have built.”
UN Secretary-General António Guterres condemned the bombing.
“The Secretary-General urges the Government of Israel to immediately halt the demolition of the UNRWA Sheikh Jarrah compound and return the site and other UNRWA facilities to the United Nations without delay for restoration,” the Secretary-General’s spokesperson told reporters on Tuesday.
The Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority called the destruction a “grave violation of all rules and norms of international law” and called on the United Nations and member states to take action to stop it.
