The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) employs 13,000 people in occupied Palestine, Lebanon, and Jordan. They operate 58 refugee camps, 706 schools, and 140 primary health facilities serving almost 6 million registered refugees. That includes 8 refugee camps in Gaza.
Israel alleges that twelve of those 13,000 relief workers played some role in the October 7 attack against Israelis by the Palestinian Resistance.
These allegations – which remain unproven, to say the least – implicate slightly less than one-tenth of one percent of UNRWA employees. Even so, the UNRWA has already fired nine of the twelve accused. But the US, Canada, Australia, Britain, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Finland, Estonia, Japan, Austria and Romania are using the unproven allegations as the basis to cut off funding for UNRWA.
That’s two-thirds or more than $760 million cut from the budget of the primary organization providing humanitarian aid in Gaza. The chief of the UNRWA says that with the funding cuts the agency may be forced to “shutter” its operations within a month. Current levels of aid are already a trickle compared to the period before October 7, and the people of Gaza are facing famine and the spread of preventable diseases in addition to the ongoing deaths caused by Israel’s bombing and its ground operations.
The corporate media has described Democrats in Congress as “divided” over support for UNRWA funding. So far, though, it appears the only public appeal for restoring UNRWA funding has come from congressperson Alexandra Ocasio-Cortes.
“Cutting off support to UNRWA—the primary source of humanitarian aid to 2 million+ Gazans—is unacceptable,” Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) wrote on social media. “Among an organization of 13,000 U.N. aid workers, risking the starvation of millions over grave allegations of 12 is indefensible. The U.S. should restore aid immediately.”
Common Dreams, “Ocasio-Cortez: US Should Restore UNRWA Funding ‘Immediately,’” 1/29/2024.
NOT ONE of Connecticut’s Democrats in the House and Senate have said they support restoring US funding for UNRWA. When urged to support a ceasefire these elected officials insisted they were doing the most good by supporting humanitarian aid. Now humanitarian aid has been cut and they are silent.
