By Andrew Whitley, Chair, Britain Palestine Project
9 Feb 2026
Three weeks ago, Israel seized and demolished the East Jerusalem headquarters of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in defiance of international law, an explicit ruling of the International Court of Justice and protests from many governments, including Britain’s.
The destruction of this unremarkable group of buildings in the Sheikh Jarrah district was not an administrative act, a planning dispute or a security necessity. It was a political statement: that Israel intends to erase the international community’s last institutional foothold in East Jerusalem.
At stake is more than the rights, presence, and future of some 50,000 Palestinian refugees in the city, important though that is. It is the legal status of East Jerusalem in the eyes of much of the world as occupied territory: the would-be capital of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
Hop into Dr Who’s Time Machine and transport yourself back 60 years: to Jerusalem at the start of June 1967–just before the Six-Day War erupted, and everything changed.
Jordan ruled over the Old City with its Christian, Muslim and Jewish holy sites, along with the eastern part of Jerusalem and the West Bank. Britain and two of its former colonies, Iraq and Pakistan, had recognised the Hashemite Kingdom’s annexation of the West Bank in April 1950. Crucially, though, as far as Britain was concerned the final status of Jerusalem remained to be decided. Messing with the unsettled status quo was always a dangerous business.
Seventy-five years on, Britain belatedly recognised another sovereign authority on the land, this time including East Jerusalem. That was over what is now termed the State of Palestine, defined as being on all the land in former Mandate territory beyond the 1949- 1950 armistice lines agreed after fighting halted.
In early 1967, if you had decided to drive from Jerusalem to Nablus, setting off from the Damascus Gate you would have travelled north through the heart of a thriving Palestinian city. Salaheddin Street, the bustling main shopping centre. Sheikh Jarrah where the notables – the Husseinis, Nusseibehs, Nashashibis, Khalidis, Dajanis and others – had built their elegant, Ottoman-style mansions and held court. The YMCA, Jordanian administrative buildings and Christian orders such as the Dominicans at the École Biblique et Archéologique Française next to Damascus Gate rubbed shoulders.
The historic winding route of the Nablus Road through East Jerusalem
As you continued driving up the Nablus Road, to the right lay the American Colony. Established by American and Swedish pilgrims who travelled to the Holy Land during the late 19th Century and settled there, this landmark hotel’s own history mirrors the twists and turns of the conflict over the past 150 years.
Nearby is a bastion of the British presence, St George’s Anglican Cathedral, along with its pilgrims’ quarters and a school where Palestinian grandees sent their children.
Twenty years ago, when I was working for UNRWA, I lived right next door to St George’s in the compound of the Taha family. Prosperous shopkeepers, their real origins belied their public appearance as solid Palestinian Muslims, revealing the private stories that often complicate accepted narratives. The matriarch of the family was a Jewish woman from Rhodes, her late husband a Moroccan who had emigrated to Palestine during the Mandate period in search of work. When the old lady died, the hidden Israeli side of her family emerged. Reminders of the city’s tormented history were inescapable, all around me.
Immediately opposite lay the sturdy, stone-built headquarters of the Mixed Armistice Commission set up after the first Israeli/Arab war. The MAC House, as it is known, today houses the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, along with UNRWA, another constant thorn in the side of Israel. Next door, until June 1967, was the symbol of the divided city, the now demolished Mandelbaum Gate. Named after a Rabbi who had lived nearby, for 19 years the Jordanian and Israeli-controlled gate had grudgingly permitted a trickle of travellers through its ramshackle structure.
Technically, my duty station had been Gaza City. Worsening clashes between Fatah and Hamas fighters in Gaza along with Israeli raids had however made Gaza too unsafe for international staff, as far as the UN was concerned. Hence our relocation to Jerusalem. We Gazan refugees crowded into the already full West Bank headquarters of UNRWA.
The building was nothing much to look at. It had been a bare-bones police training centre during the Mandate. My wife’s late grandfather, who worked for the British as a policeman before deciding that trade was more lucrative, may well have trained there.
In 1952, the Jordanian Government rented the premises to the then infant UN agency tasked with taking care of refugees from the just concluded war, providing them with all the essentials of life needed to survive as well as basic health and education. To correct a common misperception, UNRWA’s mandate was – and remains to this day – to care for all those in need who had been displaced from Mandate Palestine, regardless of ethnicity or religion, not just Palestinians. All they had to do was prove their prior connection to the land.
We never, in the UNRWA compound, felt welcomed by our Israeli neighbours
A three-sided structure of two storeys, the main building was surrounded by workshops used to support a large fleet of vehicles. Most were modest Fiat Puntos for the Palestinian Area, or local, staff working across East Jerusalem and the West Bank – in UNRWA schools, training centres and clinics. It was a largely self-sustaining organisation, complete with its own petrol station and vehicle repair shop inside the compound. But the surrounding environment outside was not exactly friendly. We never felt welcomed by our Israeli neighbours.
The blue UN flag that used to flutter over the compound’s entrance gate faced onto an Israeli memorial from 6 June 1967, the first day of the Six-Day War. On Ammunition Hill, IDF soldiers fighting to capture all of Jerusalem encountered tenacious resistance from the Jordanian Arab Legion. A strategic position, the small hill next to the former British police station commanded the route to the Jewish enclave of Mount Scopus deep inside Jordanian territory where Hebrew University is located. Eventually the hill was captured, with heavy losses on both sides. Today it is a place of pilgrimage for Israeli schoolchildren.
The “seam line,” as Israelis term the frontier zone winding between Jewish and Muslim quarters of Jerusalem, runs alongside Nablus Road next to UNRWA’s now demolished headquarters. Until 1967, Israeli authorities billeted indigent Jewish immigrants from Arab countries along the front line; their shabby buildings were exposed to occasional sniper fire. Later, the districts immediately surrounding the UNRWA compound became the destination of choice for Ultra-Orthodox Haredim communities keen to separate themselves from their secular Jewish brethren. Mea She’arim, a deeply conservative neighbourhood, expanded as the Haredim population rapidly grew.
On Friday evenings, as I left work, I would hear the distinctive sound of the shofar, signalling the start of the Sabbath. Woe betides any unwary driver who accidentally strayed into Mea She’arim after sunset, especially if at the wheel of a distinctive white UN vehicle, those big letters painted on its sides and roof.
The seized UNRWA premises are apparently intended to accommodate more of the Haredim, a community looked down upon by secular Israelis but always pampered by Israeli governments. It is not incidental that under international law – a recent World Court ruling and binding UN Security Council resolutions – all settlements beyond the 1949 Green Line such as the new one planned for construction on the former UNRWA site are illegal. But when did international law ever deter Israel when there has been no price to pay?
For decades prior to the Knesset’s decision in October 2024 to prohibit UNRWA from working in Israeli “sovereign territory” (interpreted to include all of Jerusalem), the Agency had been under pressure to vacate its premises in Sheikh Jarrah and move to Ramallah where the Palestinian Authority camps out.
Our presence symbolised the world’s rejection of Israel’s claim to all Jerusalem
At times financial inducements to relocate were brandished. Backed by UN Headquarters in New York and support from almost all member states, the Agency however stood firm. Its continuing presence in East Jerusalem symbolised the international community’s rejection of Israel’s claim to the whole of Jerusalem. This fight was never just about a single building flying the blue flag. It was always about much more. As foreign Consulates located in East Jerusalem well know, the presence of a humble UNRWA health clinic in the Old City or a primary school for Palestinian children registered as refugees can carry heavy political weight.
What next? Clearly Israel is not finished in its campaign against UNRWA. Already it is making it difficult for the Agency’s schools and clinics in East Jerusalem as well as the Kalandia Training Centre – a lifeline for Palestinians seeking to learn a skilled trade and get a job – to continue operating.
Refugee camps within the municipality’s boundaries such as in Shu’afat may also come under greater pressure. But where are its inhabitants supposed to go? And how are they supposed to cope if they cannot access UNRWA clinics and schools? Much though it would like to do so, the Palestinian Authority is prohibited by Israel from providing public services or setting up shop inside Jerusalem.
Personally, I feel it is high time governments stood up to Israel’s bullying and outrageous flouting of international law. The International Court of Justice lacks the means to enforce its rulings. It relies instead on member states. Citing last October’s ruling, which demanded that Israel enable UN agencies, notably UNRWA, to work unhindered in the occupied territories, perhaps governments could ask their own courts to examine how to give practical effect to the ICJ decision.
Using the established legal principle of universal jurisdiction, if a growing number of courts around the world were to demand that Israel reverse its illegal actions and pay compensation to UNRWA for destroying what are supposed to be protected premises that would be a good start. Israel would feel the heat – and find it difficult to escape the consequences. There is precedent: after a previous bout of fighting in Gaza, the Israeli government quietly paid compensation to UNRWA for the destruction of its premises.
Ultimately though what matters is not the fate of a single UN agency, however iconic it may be in the eyes of its beneficiaries. It is the future of the people it serves. If UNRWA is unable to work properly in the Palestinian territories, as is becoming evident may be the case, another international organisation will have to take its place. The basic rights of the refugees must always be paramount. And the fight for justice will continue.