Israel has been trying for years to dismantle UNRWA, which helps Palestinian refugees in Gaza and elsewhere.
The UN chief has spearheaded an internationally backed initiative to support his Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) but has yet to convince his main Western donors.
The United States and Britain, key allies of Israel, have continued to financially block the main organization delivering humanitarian aid to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and elsewhere.
Fourteen of the 16 donor countries have resumed funding after suspending it in January when Israel accused members of the organization of involvement in the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attacks that killed more than 1,100 people in southern Israel.
The United States was UNRWA's largest donor, but Congress banned any payments to the agency until March 25, 2025.
An independent investigation in April concluded that Israel had failed to provide credible evidence for its claims. There is an independent investigation into the October attack itself, conducted by the United Nations Office of Internal Oversight Services.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told a pledging conference in New York on Friday that UNRWA faces “a deep funding gap” and that without financial support for the organization “Palestinian refugees will lose a critical lifeline and the last ray of hope for a better future.”
“I want to be clear: there is no alternative to UNRWA,” he said, also warning that Israeli evacuation orders are forcing Palestinians to “move like human pinballs through a landscape of destruction and death.”
Without the necessary support and funding for @UNRWAPalestine refugees will lose a vital livelihood and the last ray of hope for a better future.
My call to the international community: protect UNRWA, its mandate and its funding.
— Antonio Guterres (@antonioguterres) July 13, 2024
UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini thanked the 118 countries that signed a shared commitment to support and strengthen financial and political support for the agency as it “suffers unprecedented attacks and systematic attempts to dismantle it.”
Lazzarini said he was hopeful that Britain, which elected a new Labour government last week, would soon resume its financial support. He said the organisation had already secured funding from donor countries until September, but the full amount pledged would not be known until next week.
According to Lazzarini, there are currently 600,000 “Palestinian girls and boys of primary and secondary school age living in the rubble, deeply traumatized,” who need UNRWA’s help to restart their education.
The initiative to support the organisation at the UN was spearheaded by Slovenia, Jordan and Kuwait and was signed by all 15 members of the UN Security Council.
'End the refugee file'
Hassan Barari, a professor of international affairs at Qatar University, told Al Jazeera that Israel has been trying for years to defund UNRWA because it believes the organisation has been effective in helping Palestinian refugees.
“They believe that if they defund UNRWA, the Palestinians will remain in their own societies and be forgotten for years to come,” he said. “This is a continuation of the Israeli attempt to defund UNRWA in order to remove the refugee file from any future negotiations.”
Lex Takkenberg, former head of UNRWA's ethics office, told Al Jazeera that the agency is the only international body with an elaborate neutrality framework that includes staff training, financial controls and inspections of its facilities.
“You can never rule out abuses, like in any other organisation, but it is doing an incredible job in providing support to Palestinians in the most extreme circumstances,” he said, adding that the agency was doing everything it could to operate according to humanitarian principles.
Takkenberg said Israel had failed to present credible evidence to support its claims that UNRWA personnel were involved in the 7 October attacks. Those claims instead served to normalise attacks on UNRWA and its facilities, which have become “an integral part of the offensive in Gaza,” he said.
