Jordan calls on donors to give more money to Palestine relief effort after funds freeze

Donors should give more money to the main UN agency providing relief for Palestinians in Gaza and elsewhere, instead of withholding it, a Jordanian Foreign Ministry official said.

The US and other western countries – the UK, Australia, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands and Finland – announced that they would freeze their funding for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

The suspension of funds came after Israel claimed that UNRWA employees participated in the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7, which killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians.

“Even if the Israeli accusations are proven, punishing the refugees is not allowed,” Rafik Kharfan, head of the Palestinian Affairs Department at the Jordanian Foreign Ministry told state television on Saturday.

Jordan is home to about two million Palestinian refugees, having received mass flows of people when Israel was created in 1948, and when Israel expanded in the 1967 Middle East War.

Mr Kharfan called for UNRWA funding “to be increased, not stopped”, citing the “difficult conditions” the body is facing because of the war. The funding freeze is “shocking” and “very negative”, Mr Kharfan said.

The US is the largest donor to the UNRWA and the main donor to Jordan. The majority of Palestinian refugees have Jordanian citizenship but are beneficiaries of UNRWA services, such as schools and clinics.

Among the UNRWA’s constituency are two million Palestinians in Gaza and half a million in Lebanon.

The US was instrumental in the establishment of the UNRWA in 1949 and is the agency’s main donor.

The agency has headquarters in Amman and Gaza. It also works in the occupied West Bank, Lebanon and Syria.