Israeli Supreme Court Petition Against Anti-UNRWA Laws Withdrawn After Justices Signal Readiness to Fully Endorse State’s Assault Against the Agency

18/08/2026

Following a hearing before the Israeli Supreme Court on 3 August 2026 on a petition challenging Israel's anti-UNRWA laws designed to dismantle the agency , Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, acting on behalf of 10 Palestinian refugee families and Gisha – Legal Center for Freedom of Movement, formally notified the Court of the withdrawal of the petition. While formally withdrawing the case, the petitioners preserve all substantive legal arguments regarding the fundamental illegality of these laws against the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and right to come back to Court in the future.

The August proceeding was the first hearing in this case, coming more than a year and a half after the petition was originally filed in January 2025. Throughout this judicial delay, UNRWA suffered catastrophic, irreversible harm, including military raids on its facilities, including schools and health care centers, structural demolitions at its East Jerusalem headquarters, and the systemic disruption of essential services across the occupied Palestinian territory.

During the hearing, the Supreme Court Justices entirely bypassed the severe constitutional,human rights, and international law violations raised by the petitioners, signaling a complete alignment with the state’s position. The Court treated Israel’s unilateral dismantling of a UN agency as a mere administrative prerogative, ignoring international legal frameworks, including the UN Charter and the laws of occupation, and urging the petitioners to withdraw the petition. The Court went so far as to suggest that municipal service provision in illegally annexed East Jerusalem satisfies constitutional requirements, reducing the systemic erasure of UNRWA’s mandate to a routine domestic service dispute.

Adalah and Gisha commented that: “The Court’s position made clear that it is completely unwilling to subject these anti-UNRWA laws to genuine judicial scrutiny or to confront Israel's binding obligations as a member of the UN under international law. Recognizing that the Court’s approach would provide judicial cover for the ongoing destruction of UNRWA, we decided to withdraw the case rather than to receive a damaging ruling that would further entrench the denial of Palestinian refugees' fundamental rights.”