Police raided the offices of UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees and their descendants, in East Jerusalem Monday morning, according to the organization’s chief, amid an ongoing Israeli crackdown on the organization’s activities.
Officers pulled down the UN flag atop the compound and replaced it with an Israeli flag, UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said, accusing Israel of “blatant disregard” for its obligation as a UN member state to respect the inviolability of UN premises.
With trucks and forklifts, the authorities took “furniture, IT equipment and other property,” Lazzarini said.
The raid comes after the Knesset passed a pair of laws in late October 2024 banning UNRWA from operating within Israeli territory. Despite the ban, UNRWA operations, including schools, healthcare and other social services, are still hobbling along in East Jerusalem.
Israeli police told AFP in a statement that the seizures were “carried out by the Jerusalem municipality as part of a debt-collection procedure.”
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“Police are present to secure the municipality’s activity,” the statement said.
Police raid an UNRWA facility in East Jerusalem, December 8, 2025 (Chaim Goldberg/FLASH90)
Jerusalem police spokesman Dean Elsdunne told AFP that the debt collection was related to a municipal occupancy tax known as arnona.
According to Israel Hayom, the agency owed NIS 11.5 million (approximately $3.5 million) in unpaid taxes and interest.
But Roland Friedrich, UNRWA director for the West Bank and East Jerusalem, said the agency was exempt from being assessed levies.
“There is no debt because the United Nations — and UNRWA is part of the United Nations and is a UN agency — is not required to pay any kind of taxes of that kind under international law and under the law that Israel itself has adopted,” he said.
Under the 1946 Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the UN, later ratified by Israel, the UN and its assets must not be taxed by host countries.
Israeli right-wing activists deface a sign in front of the shuttered gate of UNRWA’s West Bank Field Office in Jerusalem on January 30, 2025 (JOHN WESSELS / AFP)
“Whatever action taken domestically, the compound retains its status as a UN premises, immune from any form of interference,” said Lazzarini, who has been declared persona non grata by Israel.
The compound has been empty of UNRWA staff since January, when the law banning its operations took effect.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency provides education, health care and aid to millions of descendants of Palestinian refugees in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.
Israel has long sought to shutter UNRWA, saying it perpetuates the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by continuing to confer refugee status on descendants of Arabs who left their homes in what is now Israel during the War of Independence from 1947 to 1949.
It ramped up its campaign against the agency after evidence showed that employees of the agency had participated in the October 7, 2023, attack by Hamas, and had incited against it.
Israel has also alleged that more than 10 percent of UNRWA’s staff in Gaza have ties to terrorist factions, and that educational facilities under the organization’s auspices consistently incite hatred of Israel and glorify terror.
Palestinians walk next to the closed humanitarian aid distribution center of UNRWA, the UN agency helping Palestinian refugees in Jabaliya, Gaza Strip on April 29, 2025. (Jehad Alshrafi/AP)
In February 2024, the IDF revealed the existence of a subterranean Hamas data center directly beneath UNRWA’s Gaza Strip headquarters. The IDF has also repeatedly targeted Hamas command centers and gunmen hiding out in UNRWA schools.
A number of freed hostages have also testified after returning to Israel that they were held in captivity in UNRWA schools and facilities.
However, some have noted the key role the agency fills in providing relief to Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, keeping them from deeper poverty that could fuel violence and terrorism, saying no other body or group is equipped to handle that responsibility.
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