Cairo warned against Israel’s repeated and disgraceful attempts to halt the UNRWA activities supporting Palestinian refugees, the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.

The ministry said the Israel plan is part of a broader campaign to distort the UN agency's activities and liquidate the Palestinian refugee cause.

Egypt further denounced these actions as clear breaches of international law, international humanitarian law, and relevant UN Security Council (UNSC) resolutions, the statement added.  

Furthermore, it urged the UNSC to assume its responsibilities for maintaining international peace and security, calling on the international community to support the UNRWA amid the Israeli occupation actions.

The ministry also affirmed the collective responsibility of UN member states to confront this unprecedented escalation, targeting and dismantling international organisations.

Israel plans to confiscate the headquarters of the UN agency in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of East Jerusalem in the occupied West Bank to build illegal settlement units on its site, according to media reports.

UNRWA, operating across several countries, was established in 1949 to assist Palestinian refugees displaced during the Nakba, by the Zionist terrorists following Israel’s creation in 1948.

Israel has been lobbying Western states to have UNRWA – the main supplier of food, water and shelter to Palestinian civilians in Gaza amid a deadly Israeli blockade – closed.

More than 223 of the agency’s staff have been killed in Israeli airstrikes, and two-thirds of its facilities in Gaza have suffered damage or destruction, Philippe Lazzarini, head of UNRWA, said in September.

Since the outbreak of the Israeli war on Gaza, the UN agency has faced funding cuts following Israeli allegations that over a dozen of its 13,000 employees in Gaza were involved in the Hamas’ 7 October attack.

Last week, a pair of bills were approved by an Israeli parliamentary committee, aiming to curb the UNRWA’s activities within Israel, while cutting off all official contact between the government and the UN agency. 

Amid its restrictions on UNRWA and other sources for food, water, fuel, and medicine supplies in Gaza, Israel has left 2.3 million on the verge of starvation in the strip since the start of the war on 7 October 2023.