Netanyahu: Israel to use ‘every means’ to combat UNRWA after ordering training center dismantled

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he ordered the dismantlement of a vocational training center run by UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, in the East Jerusalem area of Kafr Aqab, hours after National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir announced the move.

Israel “will not allow an organization whose employees were involved in terrorism and in the October 7 massacre to operate on its territory, and will take action against it using every means at its disposal,” Netanyahu says in a Hebrew-language statement.

Israeli officials have repeatedly accused UNRWA of fomenting anti-Israel sentiment in its schools, and collaborating with Hamas in Gaza following the Hamas-led onslaught of October 7, 2023. It also accuses a portion of UNRWA employees of taking part in the onslaught. The UN agency denies the charges.

Ben Gvir had said that Israeli police were working to “get UNRWA out of the area,” after the Jerusalem municipality greenlit a plan this month to build a road and an “educational complex” over the 82-dunam (20-acre) area of the training center.

The area is officially owned by the Jewish National Fund. The municipality’s plan, first announced in April, says the complex will include classrooms, as well as a mosque and health, welfare and culture centers for Kafr Aqab residents.

UNRWA says the land was given to it later on by the Jordanian government in 1952 — when Jordan controlled East Jerusalem after it captured the area during Israel’s 1948 War of Independence — to establish the vocational training center that has operated there ever since. The UN body said earlier this month that it was aware of the municipal plan, and that carrying it out would violate protections for UN facilities under international law.