Jewish leaders back US’s ‘floating pier’ Gaza aid plan, amid calls to fund UNRWA

As Anthony Albanese considers alternative routes to funnel aid into Gaza, Jewish leaders have urged Labor to back the US’ ‘temporary floating pier’ plan rather than restore UNRWA funding.

Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive Peter Wertheim. Picture: John Feder

Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive Peter Wertheim has urged Labor to support the United States’ plan to build a “temporary floating pier” in Gaza to deliver aid, rather than restore funding to the UN’s aid agency.

Mr Wertheim said the Jewish community supported the provision of aid to civilians in Gaza who were in desperate need but remained “totally opposed” to using the United Nations Relief and Works Agency to deliver that aid.

The call comes after Anthony Albanese signalled on Monday that Labor was considering alternative routes to funnel humanitarian aid into Gaza “through other forms” than UNRWA, saying that he was “giving consideration to the range of support”.

“The consequences of the action that’s taken place there should not impact on innocent civilians the way that it has,” he told ABC Radio Canberra. “We’ve been very clear about that.

“And we continue to call for not just humanitarian support, and we’re giving consideration to the range of support that can be given, including through other forms as well, in terms of essential food and lifesaving delivery there.”

The Prime Minister’s remarks come amid mounting pressure to reverse a pause in funding to UNRWA, which was announced following allegations some of its staff played a role in the October 7 attack, with Canada and Sweden announcing it was restoring its support.

Mr Wertheim said it would be “irresponsible” to waste taxpayers’ money supporting the UN agency, arguing that instead Australia could bolster the US effort to “establish a temporary floating pier in Gaza to deliver aid supplies to civilians in Gaza directly, and bypass UNRWA”.

“It has been demonstrated that UNRWA employees, including schoolteachers, participated in the Hamas massacre of October 7 and many others have collaborated with Hamas in other ways,” he said.

“UNRWA is so intimately connected to Hamas that no level of external control has been able to prevent large quantities of aid from being commandeered by Hamas at the expense of Gazan civilians.

Anthony Albanese in Tasmania on Monday. Picture: Rob Burnett

“The vast resources that have been squandered in constructing Hamas’s extensive labyrinth of tunnels, much of which has now been destroyed, are testament to that.”

Opposition foreign affairs spokesman James Paterson said the government should only restore funding to UNRWA when it was “confident that there is no risk of any of that funding finding its way to Hamas”.

Senator Paterson urged Labor to wait until an investigation into UNRWA had been completed to ensure Australian money was not being “misspent”.

“The major obstacle to get aid into Gaza is not funding for UNRWA. It is the physical obstacles and operational obstacles to getting the aid in. Of course, more aid would always be welcome,” he told ABC Radio National.

“But the main obstacles are not the amount of aid, but the access of that aid into Gaza and particularly the distribution of the aid within Gaza, which is very challenging operationally.”