Israel Begins Demolition of UNRWA East-Jerusalem Headquarters After 2024 Ban

Great-power contempt for multilateral property is rare but not unprecedented: in 1984, U.S. Marines shelled UNIFIL positions in southern Lebanon; in 1956, British–French forces briefly occupied the Gaza headquarters of the short-lived UNEF. Each episode eroded confidence in the UN’s ability to shield civilians. Today’s demolition fits a longer trend—since the 1990s Oslo stall, Israeli policy has shifted from managing UNRWA to delegitimising it, while U.S. politics have moved from conditional funding cuts (2018) to talk of branding the agency a terror group (2026). Simultaneously, lawyer-led “lawfare” campaigns such as Shurat HaDin’s billion-dollar suits aim to choke any structure that sustains Hamas or the refugee narrative. Whether successful or not, physically erasing a UN compound in the city that hosts three faiths tests the post-1945 premise that UN premises are inviolable. On a century horizon, the episode signals a weakening of universalist institutions and a re-assertion of state sovereignty reminiscent of the interwar period—an arc that, if unchecked, could normalise attacks on other diplomatic or humanitarian missions worldwide.