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The US-led Board of Peace has declared that the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) will play no part in Gaza, a decision that closely mirrors a position Israeli governments have pressed for decades. The board, which has been charged with overseeing the territory's "ceasefire" and reconstruction, said it would work only with partners it considers reliable and capable of meeting Gaza's needs — a standard it says the UN agency fails.
The announcement came on Friday, days after the BoP unveiled a multibillion-dollar reconstruction blueprint at the United Nations General Assembly. The plan sets out 66 projects, with $2.4bn earmarked for initial efforts to begin rebuilding the devastated enclave. Almost a year on from the so-called ceasefire that began following nearly three years of Israel's war on Gaza, many of the ceasefire's core provisions — including the withdrawal of Israeli forces and the disarmament of Hamas — remain stalled.
In a post on X, the board said its policy toward UNRWA's involvement in Gaza "is unchanged," adding: "We will only work with trusted partners who will deliver for the people of Gaza and contribute to a deradicalised Strip. UNRWA fails on those litmus tests." Notably, the UNRWA was left off the list of UN agencies the board named as partners in its reconstruction programme.
Behind the public statement, however, the process appears less absolute. A BoP official, speaking to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity, said board members had met UNRWA officials several times and acknowledged that the agency's programmes could continue if they served Gaza's residents well. The same official nonetheless declared that "UNRWA's days are over" — suggesting the exclusion is a policy of institutional exclusion rather than an immediate halt to every service the agency delivers.
UNRWA, the body established in 1949 to support tens of thousands of Palestinians displaced from their homes, has long been a lifeline for the population of Gaza. Acting Commissioner-General Christian Saunders, speaking in Gaza on Friday, said the agency "remains an institution of considerable humanitarian and strategic value, with capabilities and expertise that are difficult to replicate today." He called it "neither logical nor responsible" to disregard those capabilities "at a moment of such profound need."
Philippe Lazzarini, the agency's former director general, was blunter. He told AP on Friday that the push to remove UNRWA is aimed at getting rid of the organisation, even though those behind it know that doing so completely "might have a further … devastating impact on the population." In a separate post on X on Thursday, he said "grandiose plans are what the Board of Peace does best," pointing to the scale of suffering across Gaza while Israel's assault continues.
The scale of UNRWA's operations makes the exclusion particularly consequential. The agency employs roughly 11,000 Palestinian staff in Gaza and remains deeply embedded in the delivery of healthcare, education, and water and sanitation services. That role carries added weight given mass displacement within the territory and continued restrictions on the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza, which have left the agency among the few institutions still delivering basic services at scale.
Beyond Gaza, UNRWA provides aid and schooling to Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, as well as in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, where millions of Palestinian refugees live. Palestinians widely regard the agency as a protector of their right of return to their homeland, while Israel has consistently sought to dismantle it. That hostility has hardened in recent years: Israel's parliament approved a law barring UNRWA from operating in the country in October 2024, and Israeli authorities demolished structures inside the agency's headquarters compound in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of occupied East Jerusalem on January 20, 2026.
Hamas quickly accused the board of adopting Israel's position. Spokesperson Hazem Qassem said on Saturday that the decision to exclude UNRWA represented "a complete alignment with the Zionist position," adding that it was designed to shut down the agency's operations, block the delivery of aid, and undermine Palestinian refugees' right of return. He described it as "strange for the peace council to adopt this hostile stance towards UNRWA" while Palestinians face relentless attacks and severe constraints on aid.
The timing of the move is also politically charged. The exclusion lands as the Board of Peace — established by US President Donald Trump earlier this year to shepherd Gaza's rebuild — is pitching a rapid start to reconstruction with a fraction of the resources experts say is needed. UN figures reported in September put Gaza's recovery requirement at $71.5bn amid what the organisation called its "most severe economic crisis", against the $2.4bn the board has proposed for its first tranche. The decision to leave out the organisation with the largest on-the-ground presence in Gaza suggests the board intends to build a parallel delivery architecture rather than rely on existing UN structures.
For Palestinians watching, the episode reinforces a pattern of suspicion about the board's independence. The Blocked reconstruction is a central test of whether the BoP can act as a neutral mechanism or simply reproduce policies set in Jerusalem — and with the ceasefire's key elements frozen, questions about funding, aid access and who is authorised to operate in Gaza are likely to grow more urgent, not less. For now, UNRWA insists its work is indispensable, and the board's stated position is that the agency does not meet its criteria. Neither side shows signs of backing down.
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