Most of Gaza’s 2.2 million people depend on UNRWA for food, water and medicine. But funding has been cut after claims some of its staff took part in the October 7 Hamas attack.
An independent review of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees is due to deliver a final report in April, after Israel said some of its staff had taken part in the 7 October Hamas attack.
So what? The agency’s money runs out in February, and Gaza depends on it.
Sixteen countries, including the UK, the US and Germany suspended funding following Israel’s allegations. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) says that without the funding it will have to suspend operations across the Middle East by the end of the month, at a time when
- around a million people in Gaza are sheltering in or near UNRWA facilities; and
- most of Gaza’s 2.2 million people depend on UNRWA as the main source for food, water and medicine. The UN says a quarter of Gaza’s residents are starving.
Thomas White, the UNRWA director in Gaza, says the consequences of the agency collapsing are “really just unthinkable”.
Before Hamas. UNRWA was established in 1949 in the aftermath of the wars surrounding Israel’s founding. It is the only UN agency dedicated to a specific community – Palestinian refugees – working in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.
By the numbers
- 700,000 – Palestinian refugees forced from their homes between 1946 and 1948
- 5.9 million – descendants of those refugees now registered as Palestinian refugees themselves
- 30,000 – UNRWA employees, 13,000 of whom operate in Gaza
- 152 – UNRWA staff among 27,000 killed so far in Israel’s offensive in Gaza
- 12 – employees linked by Israel to October’s Hamas terrorist attacks
- $1.6 billion – UNRWA’s annual budget, with a monthly spend of $60 million on salaries
- $65 million – UNRWA’s funding shortfall by the end of February, according to the NYT
Political tension between Israel and UNRWA is almost as old as the agency itself. Israel rejects the right of Palestinians to return to their old homes in Israel, viewing it as a threat to the Israeli state. For Palestinians, UNRWA represents the hope that they might one day go back.
“As long as UNRWA is there servicing the Palestinians, it represents the right of return and it stays on the agenda,” a former international UNRWA employee said.
“I think the current Israeli government wrongly assumes that if UNRWA vanishes, the Palestinian refugee problem would disappear as well.”
- Israel says UNRWA schools promote anti-Israel bias; an UNRWA review seen by to the US State Department in 2018 found neutrality problems in 3 per cent of textbook pages.
- UNRWA has previously said it found rockets hidden in empty schools in Gaza and “strongly and unequivocally” condemned the militant groups responsible.
- The agency is largely dependent on voluntary donations rather than the UN general budget, making it financially vulnerable. Donald Trump cancelled US funding of UNRWA in 2018, amounting to $360 million a year. Biden restored aid to the agency in 2021 but UNRWA started 2023 with a $75 million deficit.
Benjamin Netanyahu claims UNRWA is “totally infiltrated” by Hamas and has called for the agency to be disbanded. Israel’s allegations against the 12 staff, based on phone records, include claims that one UNRWA worker kidnapped a woman during the 7 October attacks. Philippe Lazzarini, the agency head, immediately fired nine of the accused and at least one other is dead.
The donor countries which have frozen funding are now reportedly referred to as “the suspenders” at UN headquarters. They don’t include Spain, which said on Monday it would send an additional $3.8 million to the agency. The accusations were made public as Israel faced a genocide case at the International Court of Justice and was ordered to increase aid to the territory.
“It’s those who are most desperate in Gaza who are most at risk,” said Chris Gunness, a former spokesman for the organisation, calling the defunding “illegal and immoral”.
The immediate reality is there is no alternative to UNWRA. Eight major international aid agencies said this week no other agency could replicate UNRWA’s role in Gaza.
What’s more. Half of Gaza’s buildings are damaged or destroyed. In the longer-term, it’s hard to see how reconstruction starts without the aid agency that has been there for seven decades.