Protests Erupt at UNRWA Office in West Bank over Funding Cuts

A number of countries – mainly Western nations, including the US, UK and Canada – suspended funding to the body after Israel alleged some UNRWA staff members took part in Hamas’s October 7 operation in southern occupied Palestine.

The prospect of the UN agency for Palestinians (UNRWA) being forced to shut down services by the end of February is deepening despair in refugee camps across the Middle East, where it has long provided a lifeline for millions of people.

It is also causing concern in Arab states hosting the refugees, which do not have resources to fill the gap and fear any end to UNRWA would be deeply destabilizing.

UNRWA, which provides healthcare, education and other services, has been pitched into crisis since Israel alleged that 12 of its 13,000 staff in Gaza were involved in the Oct. 7 Hamas-led operation, prompting donors to suspend funding.

UNRWA hopes donors will review the suspension once a preliminary report into the assertions is published in the next several weeks.

For Palestinians, UNRWA's importance goes beyond vital services. They view its existence as enmeshed with the preservation of their rights as refugees, especially their hope of returning to homes from which they or their ancestors were expelled in 1948.

UNRWA - the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East - was set up in 1949 to provide refugees with vital services.

Today, it serves 5.9 million Palestinians across the region.

More than half a million children are enrolled in its schools. More than 7 million visits are made each year to its clinics, according to UNRWA's website.

"The role this agency has played in protecting the rights of Palestinian refugees is fundamental," UNRWA spokesperson Juliette Touma told Reuters in an interview.

Arab states hosting the refugees have long upheld the Palestinians' right of return, rejecting any suggestion they should be resettled in the countries to which they fled in 1948.

UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said the agency might cease operations in late February without more money.

Its third-biggest donor – the European Union – is due to make an 82-million-euro ($88-million) payment at the end of the month. But the 27-nation bloc's executive branch has demanded an audit of the agency by EU-appointed independent experts.

Of the UN agency’s 13,000 Gaza staff members, more than 3,000 continue working. Screening them within weeks would be impossible, and time is of the essence. The agency has been the main supplier of food, water and shelter during the war on Gaza, where around 85% of the population has been displaced.

“Should UNRWA cease or limit services, which may be the case as early as the end of February, it would significantly aggravate the ongoing dramatic humanitarian crisis,” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell wrote in a blog on Sunday, a day after discussing the issue with the bloc’s foreign ministers.