U.S. Pauses Funding U.N. Refugee Agency
Allegations that 12 staffers were linked to the Israel attack are being probed
BY VIVIAN SALAMA AND DAVID LUHNOW · 27 Gen 2024
WASHINGTON—The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees said it had opened an investigation into allegations that several employees were linked to the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel, prompting the U.S. 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 Friday.
Lazzarini said those found to be involved would be criminally prosecuted. Some had already had their contracts terminated, he added.
The U.S. State Department said it put a temporary hold on its assistance to UNRWA while the agency investigates allegations that 12 of its staffers were involved in the Oct. 7 massacre of some 1,200 people, most of them civilians. The attack prompted Israel to launch a war in Gaza that has killed more than 25,000 people, mostly women and children, according to Palestinian authorities, whose figures don’t distinguish between combatants and civilians.
The claims that some of its staff are linked to Hamas are a blow to the agency, which is the main U.N. 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 U.S. and Israeli politicians of all stripes have long accused the agency of pro-Palestinian bias, and in the past Israel has accused individual UNRWA staff of ties to Hamas, which is considered a terrorist group by the U.S. and Europe. The majority of the agency’s roughly 30,000 staff are Palestinian.
A statement from State Department spokesman Matthew Miller Friday said that assistance would be paused while the department reviews both the allegations and steps being taken by the U.N. to address them. Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke with United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres to emphasize the necessity of a thorough and swift investigation, the statement said.
An Israeli government official said that at least one of the 12 UNRWA employees held a senior role within Hamas.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said he supported the U.S. 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,” he 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 Biden administration restarted UNRWA funding in 2021.
The House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight and Accountability plans to hold a hearing on UNRWA next week.
The agency was created in 1950 to care for an 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 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% of the strip’s two million people.
In October, UNRWA said it needed an additional $481 million by the end of 2023 to meet the unprecedented humanitarian needs of the people of Gaza and the West Bank.
President Biden asked Congress in October to approve $9 billion in urgent assistance for humanitarian crises, including at least $100 million in aid for the Palestinians from existing federal funds. But that $9 billion—partially intended to replenish UNRWA’s dwindling funds—has been subject to recent partisan funding disputes on Capitol Hill.