Israel began demolishing the UNRWA headquarters in East Jerusalem Tuesday, following passage of a law that banned the activities of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees.
Police forces, alongside enforcement officers from the Israel Land Authority, arrived at the compound with bulldozers and engineering equipment and began demolishing the site, according to footage obtained by CNN. The Israel Land Authority said in a statement that law enforcement “secured full possession of the property and began clearing the premises.”
UNRWA slammed the move as “an unprecedented attack against a United Nations agency and its premises.” The agency wrote on X that it represented a “new level of open and deliberate defiance of international law, including of the privileges and immunities of the United Nations, by the State of Israel.”
The UN Convention on Privileges and Immunities, which Israel joined in 1949, explicitly states that UN compounds and facilities “shall be inviolable” and “immune from search, requisition, confiscation, expropriation and any other form of interference, whether by executive, administrative, judicial, or legislate action.”