United Nations Immunities in Occupied East Jerusalem: Israel’s Legislation on the Relief and Works Agency – ASIL

Introduction

On October 28, 2024, Israel adopted legislation that ended the 1967 exchange of letters between Israel and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and barred every Israeli state authority from contact with UNRWA (the “first measure”). A second piece of legislation prohibited UNRWA from conducting any activity within the sovereign territory of the state of Israel (the “second measure”). Both statutes took effect on January 30, 2025. A third statute, dated December 29, 2025, amended the first (the “third measure”).[1]

On January 16, 2025, shortly before the first and second measures went into effect, Adalah, the Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, filed a petition challenging the constitutionality of the statutes on behalf of ten Palestinian refugees who received UNRWA services, together with Gisha, the Legal Centre for Freedom of Movement.[2] UNRWA itself, whose mandate derives from a resolution of the General Assembly of the United Nations (UN), was not a party to the suit.[3]

The petition made its way to the Supreme Court of Israel, sitting as the High Court of Justice (High Court). Following a hearing on August 3, 2026, the petitioners gave notice that they no longer maintained it. On August 16, 2026, the High Court struck the petition out, rather than dismissing it, with no costs awarded and the petitioners’ rights and arguments reserved.[4] Israeli press reports of the hearing record the judges as observing that no evidence of a violation of rights had been presented, and as recommending that the petition be withdrawn.[5]

In the meantime, in October 2025, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued an Advisory Opinion identifying Israel’s obligations in relation to the presence and activities of the UN in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. The General Assembly had asked what those obligations were, not whether Israel had breached them.[6] The Advisory Opinion’s holdings on UN privileges and immunities bear directly on the three measures, and on whether those measures may lawfully be applied in East Jerusalem, which Israel treats as its sovereign territory and which the Court treated as occupied.

This Insight sets out the three Israeli measures, the holdings of the Advisory Opinion that bear on them, and the course of the domestic litigation. It closes on the question the Israeli High Court’s strike-out of the domestic petition challenging the legislation leaves open: whether the measures are consistent with the obligations the ICJ identified, a question which no court has determined.

The ICJ Advisory Opinion on UN Privileges and Immunities

On October 22, 2025, the ICJ issued its Advisory Opinion on the obligations of Israel in relation to the presence and activities of the UN in and in relation to the Occupied Palestinian Territory. On privileges and immunities, the Court began with Article II, Section 3, of the 1946 Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the UN (General Convention), which makes UN premises inviolable and UN property and assets immune from search, requisition, confiscation, expropriation, and any other form of interference, “whether by executive, administrative, judicial, or legislative action.”[7]

The Court read this provision as imposing a twofold obligation on Israel. First, Israel must respect the inviolability of UN premises, including field offices in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and must not interfere with the performance of their functions. Second, Israel must refrain from undertaking any executive, administrative, judicial, or legislative action against the property and assets of the UN and its entities.[8]

Whether a particular facility qualified as UN premises had to be assessed on the circumstances pertaining to that facility. For UNRWA’s schools, health clinics and hospital, what was pertinent was whether the functions and services they provided formed part of UNRWA’s mandate, a requirement grounded in the functional nature of the privileges at issue.[9] The Court added that it was for the UN to determine whether a facility remained UN premises, and that such a determination created a presumption that could be set aside only for the most compelling reasons and was to be given the greatest weight by states.[10]

Additionally, the Court held that Article 105 of the UN Charter, which accords the UN such privileges and immunities as are necessary for the fulfillment of its purposes, was not territorially limited in a manner that would release an occupying Power exercising jurisdiction and control from its obligations under the General Convention. A member state had no right unilaterally to revoke the privileges and immunities accorded to the UN or its personnel.[11]

The Court recalled that, within the territory of Israel, the presence and activities of the UN and its entities were subject to Israel’s consent. However, it further held that in occupied territory, over which Israel, as an occupying power, enjoyed no sovereignty, Israel was not entitled to decide unilaterally on the presence and activities of the UN as it could in its own territory.[12]

The Court also addressed East Jerusalem. It recalled that Israel’s territorial claim there had long been declared null and void by the Security Council, and observed that the second measure, which prohibited UNRWA activity in the territory of the state of Israel, purported to apply to East Jerusalem, which indicated that Israel continued to exercise sovereignty over that occupied territory.[13]

The Israeli Domestic Legislation and Its Application

The first and second measures ended Israel’s engagement with UNRWA and prohibited its activity in territory that Israel treats as its own. The third measure, adopted on December 29, 2025, went further.

Pursuant to the third measure, utilities must not supply electricity, water, or gas to a property where the registered consumer was UNRWA, and must disconnect the service fifteen days after notice, unless that consumer filed an affidavit stating that he neither represented UNRWA nor acted on its behalf.[14] The amendment imposed similar duties on telecommunications providers and financial bodies.[15] The UN Secretary-General has since reported the cutting off of water and electricity to multiple UNRWA facilities in occupied East Jerusalem, and placed those interruptions in the context of the legislation.[16]

The third measure also disapplied the UN (Privileges and Immunities) Ordinance, 1947, a domestic Israeli statute, to UNRWA, its officials, its employees, and its assets, thereby withdrawing, to that extent, the instrument by which UN privileges took effect in Israeli law.[17] Finally, the measure granted Israeli authorities the power to take possession of land in two compounds, identified by maps appended to the statute, on which UNRWA facilities were built.[18]

The UN Secretary-General treated all three measures as a single course of conduct, notifying the General Assembly that the first measure, as amended in December 2025, prohibited the provision of basic utilities and other essential services to UNRWA, revoked national laws giving effect to its privileges and immunities, and authorized Israeli authorities to take possession of land occupied by UNRWA.[19]

The Domestic Litigation

The Adalah petition challenged the two 2024 statutes as unconstitutional under Israel’s Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty. The petitioners argued that halting UNRWA’s services would violate Palestinian refugees’ rights to dignity, education, property and freedom of occupation, that the harm was disproportionate to any legitimate purpose, and that the statutes breached Article 105 of the UN Charter and the General Convention.[20] Israel’s position was that the 2024 statutes prohibited UNRWA activity within Israel’s sovereign territory only, and that in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip UNRWA activity would proceed without Israeli involvement.[21]

The High Court declined to reach the constitutional question three times, recording on each occasion that an administrative route remained open. In January 2025 it refused interim relief, noting the alternatives the respondents said had been prepared in East Jerusalem and Israel’s submission that review at the administrative level remained available, expressly without taking a position.[22] In April 2025 it saw no reason to depart from that decision.[23] In January 2026, it refused relief directed at the December 2025 amendment, holding it exceeded the scope of the petition as then framed, and again left the administrative route open without taking a position.[24]

After its issuance, the Advisory Opinion was placed before the High Court. On January 29, 2026, the High Court recorded that the petitioners had given notice of decisions of international tribunals said to bear on the issues in the petition, and left it to them to raise them in the amended petition it had directed them to file. The amended petition, filed on February 19, 2026, set out the Advisory Opinion and pleaded violations of the General Convention and the UN Charter.[25] No ruling was given on any of it before the petition was struck out.

Conclusion

The question therefore remains open: whether the three Israeli domestic measures are consistent with the obligations identified by the ICJ under Article 105 of the Charter and the General Convention. The question was pleaded domestically but never decided, and the General Convention’s own procedure for settling such differences has not been used. Section 30 of the General Convention provides that differences arising out of the interpretation or application of the Convention shall be referred to the ICJ, and that the opinion given shall be accepted as decisive by the parties.[26] As Vice-President Sebutinde observed in her separate opinion appended to the Advisory Opinion, however, the General Assembly’s request did not invoke Section 30, and the Court has held that the mechanism applies only where the request expressly refers to it.[27]

On January 8, 2026, the Secretary-General notified the General Assembly that a situation may exist in which a difference had arisen between the UN and Israel concerning the interpretation or application of the General Convention, and stated that he would inform the General Assembly and the Security Council should he determine that further steps needed to be taken in that regard.[28] As of September 2026, the Secretary-General had not invoked Section 30. On December 5, 2025, the General Assembly extended UNRWA’s mandate to June 30, 2029.[29]

Taken together, these developments trace a question that has been identified but not determined. The Court stated what Israel owes the UN in occupied territory. It was not asked, and did not decide, whether any of the three measures breaches what it stated, and the domestic proceeding in which that further question was pleaded closed before any ruling on it. What divides the two positions is, in substance, territorial. Israel’s position rests on treating East Jerusalem as its sovereign territory, in which the presence of the UN is subject to its consent; the Court proceeded on the footing that the same area is occupied, when it is not. Until that premise is tested in a procedure whose outcome both are bound to accept, the obligations the Advisory Opinion identified will continue to be asserted on one side and resisted on the other rather than applied. Whether that procedure is set in motion is the question on which the next phase of this dispute turns.

About the Author: Bhavya Johari is a Lecturer and Assistant Dean at Jindal Global Law School, O.P. Jindal Global University, and an Assistant Editor at the Jindal Global Law Review.

[1]Law for the Cessation of UNRWA Activity, 5785-2024, SH No. 3296 p. 4 (Isr.); Law for the Cessation of UNRWA Activity in the Territory of the State of Israel, 5785-2024, SH No. 3295 p. 2 (Isr.); Law for the Cessation of UNRWA Activity (Amendment), 5786-2025, SH No. 3477 p. 192 (Isr.) [hereinafter Amendment].

[2]English Summary of the Petition Against Israeli Laws Aimed at Shutting Down UNRWA, Adalah (Jan. 16, 2025) [hereinafter Petition Summary]; HCJ 41922-01-25 Alqam v. Knesset (Isr. Jan. 29, 2025) (Barak-Erez, J.).

[3]HCJ 41922-01-25 Alqam v. Knesset, ¶ 1 (Isr. Jan. 29, 2026); G.A. Res. 302 (IV), ¶ 7 (Dec. 8, 1949).

[4]HCJ 41922-01-25 Alqam v. Knesset (Isr. Aug. 16, 2026) (Grosskopf, Canfy-Steinitz & Kasher, JJ.).

[5]Netael Bendel & Gilad Cohen, High Court of Justice Recommended Deleting the Petition: “The State Is Not Obliged to Cooperate with UNRWA,” Ynet (Isr.) (Aug. 3, 2026).

[6]Obligations of Israel in Relation to the Presence and Activities of the United Nations, Other International Organizations and Third States in and in Relation to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Advisory Opinion, ¶ 77, 2025 I.C.J. Gen. List No. 196 (Oct. 22) [hereinafter Advisory Opinion]; G.A. Res. 79/232 (Dec. 19, 2024).

[7]Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations art. II, § 3, Feb. 13, 1946, 1 U.N.T.S. 15 [hereinafter General Convention]; Advisory Opinion, supra note 6, ¶¶ 181-82.

[8]Advisory Opinion, supra note 6, ¶¶ 193, 195.

[9]Id. ¶ 194.

[10]Id. ¶ 196.

[11]U.N. Charter art. 105, ¶ 1; Advisory Opinion, supra note 6, ¶¶ 183, 185, 215.

[12]Id. ¶ 184.

[13]Id. ¶ 219 (citing S.C. Res. 478 (Aug. 20, 1980)).

[14]Amendment, supra note 1, § 1 (inserting § 2B(b)).

[15]Id. (inserting §§ 2C, 2D).

[16]Press Release, Secretary-General, Secretary-General Strongly Condemns Israeli Authorities’ Unauthorized Entry, Interference with UN Palestine Refugee Agency’s Kalandia Training Centre, U.N. Doc. SG/SM/23247 (Aug. 25, 2026).

[17]Amendment, supra note 1, § 3 (inserting § 6).

[18]Id. § 1 (inserting § 2E and the Second Schedule).

[19]Letter from the Secretary-General to the President of the General Assembly, at 1-2 (Jan. 8, 2026) [hereinafter Secretary-General Letter].

[20]Petition Summary, supra note 2.

[21]Alqam (Jan. 29, 2025), supra note 2 (recording the respondents’ position at ¶ 16).

[22]Id.

[23]HCJ 41922-01-25 Alqam v. Knesset (Isr. Apr. 23, 2025) (Barak-Erez, J.).

[24]HCJ 41922-01-25 Alqam v. Knesset, ¶¶ 3-4 (Isr. Jan. 29, 2026).

[25]Id. ¶ 6; Amended Petition ¶¶ 132-40, Alqam (Isr. Feb. 19, 2026).

[26]General Convention, supra note 7, art. VIII, § 30, quoted in Advisory Opinion, supra note 6, ¶ 213.

[27]Advisory Opinion, supra note 6 (separate opinion of Sebutinde, V.P.), ¶ 37 & n.46.

[28]Secretary-General Letter, supra note 19, at 3-4.

[29]G.A. Res. 80/78, ¶ 6 (Dec. 5, 2025).