Who will the next president and Congress side with in a brewing, increasingly hostile battle between the United Nations and Israel?

On Monday the Knesset enacted by a sweeping majority a law that in 90 days will bar the United Nations Relief and Works Agency from operating in Israel, Gaza, and West Bank. The act is raising a global backlash.

Leading European countries are condemning the law. The Palestinian Arab observer at the UN, Riyad Mansour, is protesting that Israel is “sitting among us.” The Biden administration is urging the Jewish state to reconsider.

In March Congress suspended all Unrwa payments for a year after Israel exposed Hamas’ control of the agency in Gaza. On Tuesday the American ambassador at the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said however that America is “deeply concerned” over the Knesset legislation. 

“Instead of speaking at one another, Israel and the UN must speak to one another, to address the fears that led to the Knesset legislation and to ensure that Unrwa can fulfill its critical mandate,” Ms. Thomas-Greenfield told the UN Security Council Tuesday.    

Unrwa was founded in 1949 to aid Arab refugees from Israel’s war of independence. Israelis have long argued that instead, it has enlisted in a Palestinian battle to eventually end Israel’s character as a Jewish state. 

In 1949 the family of a Christian Arab diplomat who currently serves as Israel’s ambassador to Azerbaijan, George Deek, was listed by Unrwa as refugees. Now he laments the agency’s efforts to perpetuate Palestinian status as stateless refugees in Arab countries. 

“My relatives in Canada have Canadian citizenship and represent their country proudly in sports championships, while my family in Lebanon is denied basic rights,” Mr. Deek writes on X. “My family members in Israel have become doctors, engineers, teachers, and diplomats, while my cousin in a Gulf country, a third-generation refugee, can only dream of citizenship.”  

Anti-Unrwa sentiments have gained steam in Israel as agency employees in Gaza actively participated in the October 7, 2003 atrocities. Unrwa installations serve a double duty as terrorist headquarters, and abet the digging of war tunnels. 

Earlier this year, Israel sent to Secretary General Guterres a list of 100 Unrwa employees who are also Hamas members. The UN claimed it needed more details before it could investigate. 

An Unrwa employee, Mohammed Abu Ittiwi, who was recently killed by Israeli troops in Gaza, “personally participated and murdered, raped, and abducted Israelis,” Israel’s ambassador at the UN, Danny Danon, told the Security Council today. While Abu Ittiwi “was collecting UN-funded paychecks, he was murdering and kidnapping Israeli civilians.”  

After Israel killed Abu Ittiwi, a senior member of Hamas’s notorious Nukhba troops, Mr. Guterres “expressed outrage at the death of this terrorist, a man responsible for some of the most savage attacks on innocent civilians in modern history,” Mr. Danon said. 

Sharp criticism of Israel has so angered Jerusalem that Foreign minister Israel Katz declared Mr. Guterres persona non grata.

Israel is also currently at odds with the UN Interim Force in Lebanon. Since 2006, it has failed its mandate to disarm Hezbollah near Israel’s border. Despite recent injuries to Unifil peacekeepers, Mr. Guterres is refusing Israel’s request to temporarily evacuate them while the IDF is battling Hezbollah in south Lebanon. 

At Hague, a UN organ, the International Court of Justice, weighs declaring Israel guilty of genocide. Another venue, the Intentional Criminal Court, seeks arrest warrants against Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

“Israel is currently at war with the UN,” the Palestinian envoy, Mr. Mansour, told the Security Council. “Countries around the world responded to the Israeli legislation with statements of condemnation and outrage. And yet, Israel still sits among us and utilizes its seat to incite against the UN.”

While Palestine is yet to assume full UN membership, its proposed anti-Israel resolutions habitually receive large UN majorities. Mr. Mansour is increasingly indicating that he would seek to suspend Israel’s UN membership at the General Assembly, where he pushes for full Palestinian membership. 

Such a switch might anger tax payers. America funds 23 percent of the UN regular budget and 30 percent of its peacekeeping operations. It finances 30 percent of Unrwa’s activities.   

“Any downgrade in Israel’s status or standing at the UNGA will result in a corresponding downgrade of U.S. financial, material, and political support to the UN,” more than 100 Republican and Democrat House members recently wrote in a letter to Mr. Guterres. 

For now, though, the Biden administration is taking the Knesset to task. “If Unrwa doesn’t exist, civilians, including children and babies, will not get the food they need, and this is, for us, unacceptable,” the Department of State spokesman, Mattew Miller, said Tuesday.

Rather than Unrwa, Israel will cooperate with other UN humanitarian agencies in Gaza, Mr. Danon says. Yet, Tuesday’s wall-to-wall condemnation might signal a battle that could eventually force America to choose between defending Israel or the UN, but not both.