The state urged the High Court of Justice on Wednesday to reject the amended petition against Israel’s anti-UNRWA legislation, arguing in an updated preliminary response that the petitioners still have not shown a concrete factual basis for claims that the laws caused sweeping harm in east Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza ahead of the next hearing set for Monday.
In the filing, Defense Minister Israel Katz, the IDF’s West Bank military commander, The Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara, the Education Ministry and the Jerusalem Municipality - argue that the case should fail both because the petitioners have not shown that the laws caused the kind of harm that would justify overturning them. In addition, they argue that it should fail because many of their complaints belong, if anywhere, in administrative proceedings rather than a broad constitutional challenge to primary legislation.
At the center of the case are two laws passed by the Knesset in October 2024: one barring UNRWA activity in sovereign Israeli territory, and another prohibiting contact between Israeli authorities and the agency.
The state response also focuses on a December 2025 amendment that expanded enforcement tools, including utility cutoffs and seizure powers over specific sites.
The state presents the legislative package as a sovereign decision governing Israel’s relations with an international body, rather than as legislation directly regulating the rights of individual petitioners.
UNRWA laws face High Court test as State defends
The government’s filing is notable not only for its substance but for its procedural framing. It stresses that three separate requests for interim relief have already been denied and says that, more than a year after the laws came into force, the petitioners still rely largely on affidavits from late 2024 rather than updated evidence of concrete harm.
The state argues that this undercuts the claim that the legislation caused the immediate systemic collapse that petitioners had forecast.
A central plank of the response is the government’s longstanding allegation that UNRWA has been deeply compromised by Hamas and other terrorist groups.
The filing repeats the state’s claim that at least 1,462 UNRWA employees in Gaza were affiliated with Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, or other terrorist organizations, and says Israeli forces found terrorist infrastructure in or adjacent to dozens of UNRWA facilities during the war.
The state presents those allegations as part of the security and foreign policy basis for the laws.
Those allegations remain disputed in the broader public record. Reuters reported in 2024 that a UN-commissioned review led by former French foreign minister Catherine Colonna found that UNRWA had robust neutrality mechanisms, while also saying Israel had not publicly produced evidence for its broader allegation that large numbers of staff were members of terrorist organizations.
The state now cites that review differently, while criticizing the UN process as too limited.
One of the most significant parts of the new response is its effort to show that the feared humanitarian vacuum in east Jerusalem did not materialize in the way petitioners predicted.
On education, the state says hundreds of students from affected institutions were absorbed into the east Jerusalem school system, while others were placed in private or informal frameworks with assistance from the Education Ministry and Jerusalem Municipality.
It says officials worked with neighborhood committees, sent information to parents, opened a hotline, and accompanied families until placements were found.
The exact student figures have varied across filings and reporting. Petitioners previously said the closures affected 783 students, while the state now describes 763 students in the closed institutions and says 617 were absorbed into the east Jerusalem system, with the remainder placed elsewhere.
The discrepancy does not alter the core legal dispute, but it reflects a factual record that is not fully uniform.
The filing also makes clear that enforcement is no longer merely theoretical.
According to the state, the East Jerusalem Electric Company identified 10 properties whose registered consumer was listed as UNRWA - including schools, clinics, and a training center - sent warning letters on January 11 and 12, 2026, and disconnected those properties from electricity on January 28. That detail is significant because it confirms that at least some of the steps petitioners warned about had already been carried out.
Outside reporting had already pointed in that direction. Reuters reported in late January 2025 that UNRWA was preparing to shutter operations in east Jerusalem after the Israeli ban took effect, with later reports noting that Israeli police shut six UNRWA schools in east Jerusalem in May 2025 and that authorities shuttered an UNRWA clinic in Jerusalem’s Old City for 30 days in January 2026.
The state also leans on the breadth of the 2025 amendment. According to the response, the amendment was enacted after a legal question arose over whether bans on contact with UNRWA also covered the continued supply of water and electricity.
The state says the amendment expressly added enforcement mechanisms and seizure authority over specific compounds in Kafr Akab and Ma’alot Dafna, framing that move as implementation of the laws’ underlying purpose - rather than as a new constitutional injury.
On Gaza, the filing adopts an especially assertive tone. The state says the petitioners’ picture is outdated because the ceasefire and renewed entry of aid changed the operational reality in the enclave. It argues that alternative aid channels are now in place and that UNRWA is no longer indispensable there in the way petitioners claimed.
That is likely to be one of the most closely watched issues at the Monday hearing. Just this month, outgoing UNRWA commissioner-general Philippe Lazzarini warned the agency’s collapse could destabilize any future Gaza arrangement and described it as still central to Palestinian relief operations. That does not resolve the legal question before the High Court, but it suggests the state’s position on substitute mechanisms in Gaza is likely to face scrutiny.
Legally, the government is trying to steer the justices away from a sweeping merits ruling. It argues that international law does not require Israel to allow UNRWA to operate on its territory or obligate Israeli authorities to cooperate with it wherever it functions, and says that even if particular enforcement decisions are contestable, that would not justify striking down primary legislation.
In effect, the state is asking the court to view the case through the lens of sovereignty, foreign relations, and security, with limited room for constitutional intervention.
What heads to the High Court on Monday, then, is not only a fight over UNRWA’s role in Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza, but a broader judicial test of how far the court is willing to intervene when the state casts legislation as an instrument of wartime security policy and foreign affairs.
Petitioners say the laws are creating irreversible facts on the ground. The government says the facts now show otherwise.