About 150 residents of the French Hill neighborhood in Jerusalem participated in the demonstration on Wednesday in front of the UNRWA-Gaza headquarters in the neighborhood of Jerusalem, demanding the immediate closure and eviction of the organization from the Capital. The residents now demand the immediate ousting and eviction of the complex, due to the real danger its presence poses to their safety.
The demonstration was held at the initiative of the chairman of the 'United' faction in Jerusalem and the deputy mayor, Aryeh King, who for the past decade has been leading the fight against the continuation of UNRWA’s activities in Jerusalem. Last week, another demonstration was held with the participation of hundreds of the City’s residents demanding the ousting of UNRWA from Ma'alot Dafna.
"We call on the Foreign Minister Yisrael Katz to stop renewing UNRWA's mandate," Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem Aryeh King said at the start of the demonstration. "The Knesset and the government share in the approval that allows UNRWA to operate in Jerusalem. If they could only decide today the approval would be cancelled. The government just needs to decide not to renew UNRWA's mandate in Jerusalem and Israel as a whole. In addition, the decision must also include the return of the properties UNRWA took from the State of Israel. There are almost 40 dunams in Ma'aleh Dafna and 85 dunams in Kfar Akeb that UNRWA simply took even though they belong to KKL-JNF."
Aryeh King added: "We must start investigating UNRWA and their employees here. Let no one be mistaken: there is no difference between the Arabs of Gaza and the Arabs of Jerusalem, there is no difference between UNRWA-Gaza and UNRWA Jerusalem. If there are rapists, murderers, and kidnappers in UNRWA Gaza, then be aware that great evil lurks in UNRWA, since there is no difference between them. That is why UNRWA needs to be expelled. Its offices, its employees, and the Agency as a whole. I call on the head of the Shin Bet and the police commissioner to start an immediate investigation against the UNRWA Hamas employees in Jerusalem, because if they do a tenth of what the UNRWA employees did in Gaza, the damage to Jerusalem and its citizens will be great and could be much worse. It takes 10 minutes to get from Khan Yunis to Nir Yitzhak, but it takes only 8 seconds to get from Jabel Mukaber to the Armon Hanatsiv neighborhood, and it takes 34 seconds to get from Issawiya to French Hill – not enough time for the police to stop a murderer, a butcher, a rapist, or a kidnapper that may come from there."
Advocacy activist and international law expert, lawyer Deborah Srour-Politis, and a candidate of the 'United with Aryeh King' list, also participated in the demonstration, stating: "We have to ask ourselves why is UNRWA in Jerusalem? After all, the Arabs of Jerusalem do not need UNRWA - they have schools and medical facilities, they have all the services just as everyone else in the city. The reason for their existence here is only one - to use their illegal schools and organizations to promote the hatred of the Jews and the war against Israel. Some claim that they are only a humanitarian organization founded to settle refugees. If this is UNRWA's goal, then it is the most incompetent agency in the history of the world, because in 75 years they did not settle a single refugee. What reason is there for maintaining refugee camps in Gaza and Judea and Samaria? Why are they not pressuring a country like Lebanon, which does not recognize the third generation of Palestinians born in Lebanon as citizens of the country, to absorb this population? My parents were deported from Egypt and sent to Brazil without knowing the language and without a single cent in their pockets, they settled there without any refugee agency to help them and succeeded. And here, they keep the refugees as a weapon against the Jews and against the Jewish state. They need to be ousted from here."
Shlomo Tsadik, a long-time resident of French Hill noted: "I have lived here since they built the French Hill from the ground up and now, unfortunately, I see a neighborhood that is hosting the worst enemies of the State of Israel, led by enemy number one: UNRWA. I remember UNRWA even before the Six-Day War, and even if we thought in the past that they were needed, in the last fifty years it became clear that there is no need for them. They have not rehabilitated even one refugee. UNRWA should not be expelled but eliminated from the world, that would be good not only for the people of Israel but for the entire world."
Dina Elbaz-Yudin, a board member of the Residents' Directorate in French Hill, noted: "The Jerusalem Municipality invests large budgets in playgrounds and facilities, which end up lasting two to three weeks. The people of the adjacent villages arrive and deliberately destroy the facilities to show disdain and contempt for the Jewish residents. We struggle to raise our children here, and it is a very big challenge to be a woman in the neighborhood. We were not surprised by what happened to the women on October 7, because we live every day with that fear. We are here with the feeling of order 8 because I do not walk the streets here lightly. How did it happen, that a well-known and pluralistic neighborhood like The French Hill, with many residents who are not only in favor of coexistence but working for it, find themselves facing hostile neighbors who do not accept us? They are comfortable, they ask for livelihood and peace, but there are attacks and terrorists running in the middle of the neighborhood, between children and schools. No one among the Arab residents has ever done anything to stop them or to prevent this incitement. They want to make the residents of French Hill and Ramat Eshkol feel like we don't belong here, to lower the apartment prices and make us leave. This is not a right or left opinion - I am only talking about our quality of life, the loss of the basic security that the residents of the neighborhood are suffering."