What makes President Trump’s efforts — disclosed this week — to strip the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees of legal immunity so important are the implications for the United Nations itself. If diplomatic immunity can be pierced in the case of UNRWA, the logical next step is to hold the United Nations accountable. That may sound like a lofty goal, but hauling UNRWA into court is a first step toward piercing the United Nations’s hide.  

Attorney General Bondi’s position that UNRWA has no immunity from prosecution over “allegations of atrocious conduct” is a 180 degree turn from the stance of President Biden’s Department of Justice. The DOJ took the position in court that the agency, which Israel contends was complicit in the atrocities of October 7, is immune in American courts. Ms. Bondi writes that the Justice Department “now concludes UNRWA is not immune.”

The occasion for the reversal is a civil lawsuit filed at the Southern District of New York by families of more than 100 victims of October 7. They are seeking some $1 billion in damages from UNRWA for “aiding and abetting” Hamas’s war plans by “helping Hamas build up the terror infrastructure and personnel that were necessary to carry out the October 7 Attack.” The plaintiffs accuse UNRWA of “torts in violation of the law of nations.” 

Turtle Bay, though, is a tough defendant. The Second United States Appeals Circuit, which oversees the Southern District, has held that the United Nations possesses “absolute immunity from suit unless it has expressly waived its immunity.” Ms. Bondi argues that that shield is unavailable to UNRWA because “it is a mere ‘affiliate or instrumentality’ of the United Nations, analogous to the specialized agencies referenced in the UN Charter.”

As a result, Ms. Bondi contends, “UNRWA is not subject to the General Convention, and is not immune from suit and that treaty or current US law.” A legal sage, Joshua Blackman, tells our Benny Avni that this volte face is a “very big deal.” The United Nations, though, is defiant and insists that UNRWA, from which America withdrew in February, is protected. Israel has banned the organization from operating in its territory.   

The Nine have held that the immunity of foreign nations and organizations “is a matter of grace and comity on the part of the United States.” America, though, is a signatory to the United Nations Charter, a treaty, meaning that by constitutional lights is part of the “supreme law of the land.” That accord mandates that the United Nations “shall enjoy in the territory of each of its Members such privileges and immunities as necessary for the fulfillment of its purposes.”

The rub, as Ms. Bondi grasps, is whether UNRWA can hoist that shield. America’s position is now that it cannot. The famous Floridian pushes farther even than that, writing that “it is highly doubtful that the UN Charter even authorizes the General Assembly to create a subsidiary organ such as UNRWA.” Meaning that the terror adjacent agency, which has hoovered up billions of dollars over the last decades, could be unlawful. 

We recognize the dangers of a world where immunity is a scarce quantity. The International Criminal Court’s pursuit of Prime Minister Netanyahu puts into sharp relief the danger of overzealous prosecutors and courts. We grasp too that Ms. Bondi’s argument concedes that Main United Nations is immune. Current events offer no logic to America being forced to spare UNRWA. Accountability could have a salutary effect that spreads far and wide from Turtle Bay.