OSLO, Oct 30 — Norway on Tuesday said it would ask the UN’s International Court of Justice to clarify Israel’s aid obligations to Palestinians, a day after Israel banned the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.

Despite international concerns, Israeli lawmakers on Monday overwhelmingly voted to bar the agency, UNRWA, from operating in Israel and east Jerusalem.

For more than seven decades, UNRWA has provided critical support to Palestinian refugees.

But it has faced mounting criticism from Israeli officials that has escalated since the start of the war in Gaza after Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack.

Israel claims that a dozen UNRWA employees were involved in the deadly assault.

Norway said it was "requesting that the ICJ pronounces on Israel’s obligations to facilitate humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian population, delivered by international organisations, including the UN and states,” Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store said in a statement.

He said Norway would submit a resolution to the UN General Assembly with the request that the ICJ give an advisory opinion on the matter.

Norway angered Israel in May when it recognised the Palestinian state, together with Ireland and Spain.

And, unlike other donors, it increased its aid to UNRWA in June despite the controversy over whether the agency’s employees were involved in the October 7 attack.

"The Israeli government’s policy is making it increasingly difficult for Palestinians to access life-saving assistance and basic services such as healthcare and education,” Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide said in the same statement.

The UNRWA ban would have "severe consequences for millions of civilians already living in the most dire of circumstances,” he said, adding that it "also undermines the stability of the entire Middle East”.

"Israel’s behaviour contravenes international law and undermines efforts to establish a viable Palestinian state and the two-state solution,” Barth Eide said. — AFP