Iman Helles, a displaced mother sheltering in a facility run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees in Gaza, fears that she will now be “thrown out to the streets” with her three children.

The United Nation's Palestinian refugee agency said on Sunday it had been ordered by Israel to vacate premises and cease all of its operations in occupied East Jerusalem by Thursday.

On Thursday, laws passed by Israel in October come into effect banning the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency, known as UNRWA, from Israeli territory and prohibiting Israeli officials from any contact with the agency.

The directive came in a letter to the U.N., after the Israeli Parliament banned the relief agency that has aided Palestinian refugees for decades.

The headquarters of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, was deserted on Wednesday as staff left before a pair of Israeli laws came into effect Thursday banning the organisation from operating on Israeli territory and prohibiting Israeli officials from any contact with the agency.

Tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem were set to lose education, healthcare and other services provided by U.N. agency UNRWA as an Israeli ban on the organisation takes effect on Thursday.

Implementation of a ban on the U.N. Palestinian relief agency UNRWA in Israel - due to start on Thursday - will be disastrous, the UNRWA chief told the Security Council on Tuesday, as the United States accused it of being "irresponsible and dangerous.

Israeli officials have not spelt out how they will enforce the legislation passed last year by Israel's parliament, which accused Unrwa of being complicit with Hamas - an allegati