Giving funds to UN agency risks misuse by Hamas, experts warn

Funding allocated to the UN Relief and Works Agency in Gaza has a ‘high risk’ of being misused and winding up in the hands of Hamas, security experts say.

Smoke billowing over Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on Thursday. Picture: AFP

Funding allocated to the UN Relief and Works Agency in Gaza has a “high risk” of being misused and winding up in the hands of Hamas, security experts say, with one former defence official accusing Labor of using the announcement as a “virtue signalling exercise”.

The warning comes as former minister and head of the Labor Friends of Israel group, Mike Kelly, said he harboured concerns over how UNRWA operated, and there were issues relating to the handling of funding in the past.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong this week announced a further $20m in aid funding to address the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Gaza, of which $6m was set aside for UNRWA. The organisation said “a good proportion of the funding” would be used to deliver feminine hygiene products to Palestinian women.

But former first assistant secretary in Defence’s international policy division, Peter Jennings, said it had become clear that some of the money that had been allocated to Gaza in the past had wound up in the hands of Hamas.

“It’s pointless allocating money to Gaza until you have a sort of political authority that’s going to work in the interests of the Gazans, and for as long as Hamas is (in power) apparently you don’t have that,” Mr Jennings, director of Strategic Analysis Australia, said. “So this is sort of virtue signalling and it’s from a government which is struggling to deal with the strategic realities of what’s actually happening … The government seems more interested in this sort of symbolism … without actually taking responsibility for the details of how things work.”

The funding follows other packages of support for the region announced by Labor in recent months, including $15m in humanitarian assistance that was allocated in October to the Red Cross, UNICEF and the UN Population Fund.

According to UNRWA, Germany last month announced two new finance agreements with the humanitarian organisation totalling €35m ($58m), following a €25m contribution in November for food assistance. Iceland, Japan, Ireland, Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Oman, Thailand and Slovenia have also contributed millions in funding to UNRWA.

Dr Kelly, a former defence industry minister, said it was clear aid needed to find its way to Palestinians but said it was incumbent on Australia to ensure it was not signing “blank cheques”.

“(There are) concerns about how UNRWA has operated in the past, or at least individuals within it, and certainly we know that there are issues that relate to the handling of funding and also how they have been pressured and suborned by Hamas in the Gaza Strip at times,” he said.

“We know we’ve had experienced in the past where you’ve had personnel within UNRWA who have different objectives. I understand that it’s a difficult situation for people who are trying to get aid to the right places in a situation where we definitely need to see effective relief being delivered to ­Gazans but we’ve all seen all those terrible instances where Hamas is opening fire on Gazans, seeking to have aid distributed to them so that they could abscond with it to support their own operations.”

Dr Kelly said the government needed to consider its aid contributions with “open eyes” and ensure they weren’t signing blank cheques without proper oversight.

But La Trobe Associate Professor of International Relations Jasmine-Kim Westendorf said while there was “always a risk” of the misuse of funds in conflicts, organisations like the UN had “very strong integrity systems to manage and respond to this risk”.

“I think we do have to take these allegations of the misuse of humanitarian funding with a grain of salt given what is demonstrated fact about manipulation of those allegations by Israel,” she said.

“To my knowledge, there’s never been any demonstrated evidence that there is systematic funnelling of UNWRA funds or materials to Hamas.”

UNRWA deputy director of operations Scott Anderson told The Australian the organisation took its core principle of neutrality “very seriously”.