US halts funding for UN agency amid claims staff took part in Oct. 7 attacks
US halts funding as UNRWA pledges to investigate Israeli allegations that 12 employees took part in the October 7 massacre that sparked the Gaza war.
The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees said Friday it had opened an investigation into allegations that several employees were linked to the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel, prompting the US to announce a temporary pause in additional assistance while the matter is reviewed.
“The Israeli Authorities have provided UNRWA with information about the alleged involvement of several UNRWA employees in the horrific attacks on Israel,” Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, said in a statement.
Lazzarini said those found to be involved would be held accountable and criminally prosecuted. Some had already had their contracts terminated, he added.
The US State Department said it has put a temporary hold on its assistance to UNRWA while it investigates allegations that 12 of its staffers were involved in the Oct. 7 massacre of some 1200 people, most of them civilians. The attack prompted Israel to launch a war in Gaza that has killed more than 25,000 people, the majority women and children, according to Palestinian authorities, whose figures don’t distinguish between combatants and civilians.
Separately on Friday, the International Court of Justice declined to order Israel to cease military operations in Gaza while the world court weighs claims by South Africa that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians. While the court ordered Israel to ensure its military not violate the Genocide Convention, it stopped short of ordering an end to Israel’s military response to the Oct. 7 attacks. Israel is coming under growing international pressure as the death toll rises. Israel says it is trying to avoid civilian deaths even as it pursues Hamas militants in crowded urban areas.
The claims that some of its staff are linked to Hamas are a blow to the agency, which is the main UN agency that deals with Palestinians, overseeing aid for more than five million Palestinian refugees in the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. Republicans in the US and Israeli politicians of all stripes have long accused the agency of pro-Palestinian bias, and Israel has in the past accused individual UNRWA staff of ties to Hamas, which is considered a terrorist group by the US and Europe. The vast majority of the agency’s roughly 30,000 staff are Palestinian.
A statement from State Department spokesman Matthew Miller on Friday said that assistance would be paused while the department reviews both the allegations and steps being taken by the UN to address them. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken spoke with United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres on Thursday to emphasise the necessity of a thorough and swift investigation of this matter, the statement said.
An Israeli government official said that at least one of the 12 UNRWA employees held a senior role within Hamas.
Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said he supported the US funding freeze and wrote on X that “major changes” are needed to prevent humanitarian efforts and funds from being compromised by Hamas.
“Terrorism under the guise of humanitarian work is a disgrace to the UN and the principles it claims to represent,” Gallant wrote.
In 2018, the administration of former President Donald Trump suspended aid to the agency for several years, with the State Department arguing the agency’s business model was “irredeemably flawed.” The agency was created in 1950 to care for the estimated 700,000 or so refugees from the 1947-48 conflicts during the establishment of Israel. But its mandate is open-ended since it automatically confers refugee status to all descendants of the original refugees, a number that has grown to more than five million.
The Biden administration restarted UNRWA funding in 2021.
The House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight and Accountability plans on holding a hearing on UNRWA on Jan. 30. The hearing is titled “UNRWA Exposed: Examining the Agency’s Mission and Failures.”
The allegations against the agency come as it is playing a big role in managing aid going into Gaza, where it provides food, medicine and education for roughly 80 per cent of the strip’s two million people.
In October, UNRWA said it needed an additional $US481 million by the end of 2023 to meet the “unprecedented” humanitarian needs of the people of Gaza and the West Bank. The UN estimates that more than half a million people in Gaza are currently facing “catastrophic hunger” amid the continuing war and UNRWA said 570,000 Gazans are classified as having food insecurity equivalent to famine levels of starvation.
In October, President Biden asked Congress to approve $US9 billion in urgent assistance for the world’s humanitarian crises, including at least $US100 million in aid for the Palestinians from existing federal funds. But that $US9 billion – partially intended to replenish UNRWA’s dwindling funds – has been subject to recent partisan funding disputes on Capitol Hill.
As of Jan. 22, the total number of UNRWA staffers killed since the beginning of hostilities was 152, the organisation said.
“These shocking allegations come as more than two million people in Gaza depend on lifesaving assistance that the Agency has been providing since the war began,” Lazzarini said Friday.
“Anyone who betrays the fundamental values of the United Nations also betrays those whom we serve in Gaza, across the region and elsewhere around the world.” The allegation isn’t the first time that UNRWA has been caught in controversy over alleged links between militant groups and its staff in Gaza. Israel has long complained that many of UNRWA’s local staff are complicit with Hamas, which has run the strip since 2007.
In 2017, Israel said that the head of UNRWA’s union had been elected to the political leadership of Hamas. The agency initially defended the union leader, a principal at an UNRWA school, but later suspended him after it said it had been provided with “substantial information” from Israel.
During the 2014 conflict between Israel and Hamas, UNRWA found weapons stockpiles at three of its schools, and Israel said UNRWA schools, along with other civilian facilities, were routinely used as a staging area by Hamas to fire projectiles at Israeli forces.
– Carrie Keller-Lynn contributed to this article.
The Wall Street Journal
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