UN votes to ask Hague if Israel upholding aid obligations to Palestinians

The United Nations General Assembly voted on Thursday to ask the International Court of Justice for an opinion on Israel’s obligations to facilitate aid to Palestinians that is delivered by states and international groups including the UN, amid Israel’s ongoing war against the Hamas terror group in the Gaza Strip.

The Norwegian-drafted resolution was adopted by the 193-member body with 137 votes in favor. Israel, the United States and 10 other countries voted no, while 22 countries abstained.

The move was partly a response to Israel’s decision earlier this year to ban the operation of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees in Israel, citing employees of the agency who were revealed to be terror operatives involved in attacks against Israelis.

The new Israeli law, passed in November, does not directly ban operations by the UN Relief and Works Agency in the West Bank and Gaza. However, it will severely impact UNRWA’s ability to work there. Top UN officials and the Security Council describe UNRWA as the backbone of Gaza’s aid response.

The ICJ, known as the World Court, is the United Nations’s highest court, and its advisory opinions carry legal and political weight, although they are not binding. The Hague-based court has no enforcement powers if its opinions are ignored.

Israel is also facing accusations of genocide in the ICJ, in a case originally brought by South Africa over the war in Gaza. Israel strenuously denies the accusation, noting measures it takes to avoid civilian casualties in the war, which started when some 3,000 Hamas-led terrorists invaded southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages.

The resolution adopted on Thursday expressed “grave concern about the dire humanitarian situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory” and called upon Israel “to uphold and comply with its obligations not to impede the Palestinian people from exercising its right to self-determination.”

Voting no on the resolution, alongside Israel and the US, were Argentina, the Czech Republic, Fiji, Hungary, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, and Tonga.

Since the war broke out with Hamas’s attack, international aid organizations have repeatedly raised the alarm about what they describe as a humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Israel says it has worked to facilitate the entry of goods into the Strip, casting blame on armed gangs, often backed by the enclave’s Hamas terror group, that have repeatedly looted aid trucks. Jerusalem has also pointed a finger at international aid organizations that it says have failed to collect or effectively distribute the aid.

UN agencies and NGOs have highlighted the difficulties in distributing aid within Gaza, citing challenges such as fuel shortages for trucks, lawlessness, and numerous restrictions they claim are imposed by Israeli military authorities on the ground, which the army says are necessary to keep aid workers out of harm’s way as it battles Hamas.

The agencies and NGOs have also alleged that the volume of aid is insufficient.

Replace UNRWA?

In a letter to the 15-member Security Council on Wednesday, Israel’s UN Ambassador Danny Danon said that “replacing UNRWA with relief schemes that will adequately provide essential assistance to Palestinian civilians is not at all impossible.”

“Israel is willing and ready to work with international partners [and already does work tirelessly] so as to allow and facilitate the continued passage of humanitarian aid to civilians in Gaza, and to ensure the unhindered provision of these necessary basic services, in a way that does not undermine Israel’s security,” Danon wrote in the letter, seen by Reuters.

Israel is working on a much-discussed plan that would see a private American contractor provide humanitarian aid to Gaza in a small piece of territory as a pilot, to reduce Hamas control over aid in Gaza, an Israeli official told The Times of Israel on Wednesday.

“I can tell you we are in the stages where the operation will begin soon,” said the official. The initial pilot will have the company operating under IDF protection.

Israel has also cut down the number of trucks delivering food and products from private sources, including businessmen, because Hamas is far more likely to loot them than they are from trucks belonging to NGOs, the official said. 

Israel has long had a combative relationship with UNRWA, which it argues has perpetuated the Palestinian refugee crisis by allowing refugee status to be passed down through generations. That anger peaked after Hamas’s October 7 onslaught, in which a number of UNRWA staffers were found to have participated.

Earlier this month, The New York Times revealed that some two dozen teachers, counselors and administrators at UNRWA schools in Gaza are members of Hamas or other terror groups.

In October, UNRWA confirmed that a Hamas commander who led the killing and kidnapping of Israelis had been employed by the agency since July 2022.

And in February, the IDF revealed the existence of a subterranean Hamas data center directly beneath UNRWA’s Gaza Strip headquarters.

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