But those services and everything from garbage pickup to water-system maintenance may begin disappearing after a pair of Israeli laws come into effect Thursday banning UNRWA from operating on Israeli territory and prohibiting Israeli officials from any contact with the agency.
The bans passed by the Israeli legislature in October also threaten UNRWA's operations across the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, where it is the lifeline for some 2 million Palestinians, most of whome are homeless from the 15-month Israel-Hamas war.
In the absence of municipal services, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, is the main provider of decent free healthcare and education to residents of Shuafat camp.
Israeli claims that around a dozen of UNRWA’s 13,000 employees in Gaza participated in the attack and that many others support or sympathize with Hamas.
In the Shuafat refugee camp, a hardscrabble district in east Jerusalem surrounded by a concrete wall, cars inched their way toward an Israeli checkpoint.
