The News
Israel has yet to provide any evidence for its claims that employees of UNRWA, the UN relief agency for Palestinian refugees, have ties to militant groups, an independent review found Monday.
The highly anticipated review — commissioned by the UN, and led by the former French foreign minister Catherine Colonna — follows months of turmoil at the agency after Israel alleged that a dozen of its Gaza employees participated in Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks on Israel. 18 donors suspended $450 million in funding, almost half of UNRWA’s annual budget, and the staff members accused of working with militant groups were immediately fired.
“Israel made public claims that a significant number of UNRWA employees are members of terrorist organizations,” the report said. “However, Israel has yet to provide supporting evidence of this.”
The report also noted that UNRWA lacks the support of intelligence services to perform a more rigorous vetting process for employees, beyond screening for individuals on UN and World Bank sanctions lists.
The agency should implement better staff vetting procedures to ensure neutrality, the report said, although it noted that a lack of funding limits the resources for achieving this.
Israel rejected the findings, with a spokesperson for the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs telling The New York Times that “This is not what a genuine and thorough review looks like. This is what an effort to avoid the problem and not address it head on looks like.”
The review called UNRWA “indispensable” for Palestinians, and the UN secretary general called for countries to resume funding the organization. “Moving forward, the secretary general appeals to all stakeholders to actively support UNRWA, as it is a lifeline for Palestine refugees in the region,” a UN spokesperson said in a statement.
SIGNALS
UNRWA warns of critical lack of life-saving aid in Gaza
UNRWA has continued to sound the alarm about the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza. Less than half the required aid is entering the strip each day, the agency said last week, detailing how destroyed aid trucks, limitations on access imposed by Israel, and the deaths of UNRWA aid workers have made delivering enough life-saving aid an impossible task. According to a report from a coalition of aid agencies, roughly 210,000 people living in northern Gaza and Gaza city are likely facing famine, Al Jazeera reported. UNRWA officials have said Israel has denied them access to northern Gaza, a claim Israeli officials have rejected. In an effort to ramp up humanitarian aid to Gazans, the U.S. is constructing a pier to deliver aid from the shoreline, but it is unlikely to quell the worsening humanitarian crisis, the president of American Near East Refugee Aid told the New Yorker.
Most countries have resumed funding UNRWA — but not US
Most of the donor countries that suspended their support for UNRWA after Israel’s allegations have restored their funding. However, the U.K., Germany, and the United States — the organization’s largest donor — have yet to resume financial support, although other donors have stepped in to try to help limit the funding shortfall, The Guardian reported. UNRWA head Philippe Lazzarini told the UN Security Council last week that a significant amount of funding remains suspended, with serious implications for the agency’s work on the ground. “We are functioning hand-to-mouth. Without additional funding we will be in uncharted territory,” Lazzarini said last month.