Western countries cut funding to UN agency over allegation of staff involvement in Hamas attack

Several countries temporarily halted their funding of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) on Saturday due to allegations that 12 employees were involved in the Hamas massacre in Israel.

“Nine countries have as of today temporarily suspended their funding to UNRWA.

“These decisions threaten our ongoing humanitarian work across the region including and especially in the Gaza Strip,” Philippe Lazzarini said in a statement on the UNRWA website.

The aid organisation runs shelters for more than one million internally displaced people and provides food and basic medical care to most of the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip.

“Our humanitarian operation, on which two million people depend as a lifeline in Gaza, is collapsing,” he wrote on Saturday evening on the online platform X, formerly Twitter.

He said he was shocked that such decisions were being made on the basis of the presumed behaviour of a few people.

“Palestinians in Gaza did not need this additional collective punishment.

“This stains all of us,” Mr Lazzarini added.

Also on social media platform X, Israeli government spokesperson Eylon Levy accused UNRWA of being a front for Hamas.

“It literally covers up for Hamas,” he wrote on X.

Neither the UN nor Israel have detailed how the employees may have been involved in the Hamas attacks.

The U.S., Canada, Australia, Britain, Finland, Italy, and other countries all called for investigations as they temporarily halted support for the agency founded in 1949 to help Palestinian refugees.

Germany will also temporarily not authorise any new funding for UNRWA in Gaza, the Foreign Office said on Saturday evening.

UNRWA has 13,000 staff in Gaza, most of them Palestinians, providing medical, education, relief and social services.

The agency is active in Jordan, Lebanon and the Palestinian Territories.

Spa/NAN