Don’t fund ‘Hamas-linked’ UN agency – MPs
Lord Cameron is warned that it would be ‘morally bankrupt’ for UK to restore aid after massacre claims
SPENDING taxpayer money on a “Hamas-linked” UN aid agency would be “morally bankrupt”, Lord Cameron has been warned.
Senior Tory MPs are urging the Foreign Secretary not to restore funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), saying it would be a “disgrace” to do so.
In January, Britain, the United States and several other countries suspended funding after 12 UNRWA workers were sacked following Israeli claims that they participated in the Oct 7 attacks. The UN has launched its own inquiry.
At the time, the Foreign Office said the UK was “appalled” by the claims that UNRWA staff were involved in a “heinous act of terrorism”, adding that it would temporarily pause funding while it reviewed the allegations.
The Foreign Office is awaiting a review into UNRWA’s neutrality, which is due this week, before making a decision. Several Conservative MPs have either written to Lord Cameron or met him personally to warn him against restoring UNRWA’s funding.
Therese Villiers, the former Cabinet minister, who has written to Lord Cameron to appeal against restoring UNRWA’s funding, said the agency is now “completely discredited”.
She told The Telegraph that the recent allegations about UNRWA staff taking part in the Oct 7 massacre are “horrific”, adding: “But there is a long history of problems with UNRWA.
“Funding should not be restored. We need a new organisation to take over provision of aid to Palestinians which is not tainted by the failings of UNRWA”.
Israel’s defence minister said in February that it had identified dozens more UNRWA workers who took part in the massacre. Yoav Gallant also said more than 1,400 UNRWA workers were members of Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad – around 12 per cent of the agency’s workforce in Gaza.
Suella Braverman, the former home secretary, said: “UNRWA has been categorically discredited and it would be a disgrace for taxpayers money to be diverted towards its activities.”
Greg Smith, a Conservative MP, said it would be “morally bankrupt” to renew funding to Hamas. “Other aid organisations operating in Gaza need to be the ones to deliver the aid,” he said. “UNRWA cannot be trusted, they are in the hands of Hamas.”
He said he attended a briefing in Parliament last month where senior Israeli officials showed a document “as thick as the Yellow Pages book” which detailed every UNRWA employee’s name and address. “They were highlighted in green if they were known to be a Hamas operative and in yellow if there was evidence that they were supportive of Hamas, and left blank if there was no intel,” Mr Smith said. “Over half the names were highlighted.”
Foreign Office documents show Britain has given UNRWA £27 million in aid since October 2022.
A memorandum of understanding between the Foreign Office and UNRWA shows Britain planned to hand it a further £2 million on April 15 and £9 million on Oct 1 this year.
Prior to the Oct 7 attack, UNRWA had faced criticism that anti-Israel material was taught in its schools in Gaza. During Donald Trump’s presidency, the US ended funding for the agency and described it as “irredeemably flawed”. The agency rejected the criticism, and aid was restored by Joe Biden in 2021.
Impact-se, a non-profit organisation which specialises in counter-extremism work in schools, published a report last year about UNRWA’s school textbooks. It alleged they are “anti-Semitic and continue to encourage violence, jihad and martyrdom”, adding: “Extreme nationalism and Islamist ideologies proliferate throughout the curriculum.”
Impact-se’s report also notes that by Hamas’ own admission, more than 100 UNRWA school graduates have become active Hamas terrorists.
Juliette Touma, UNRWA’s director of communications, said: “Every year we show a list of our staff with the host government, wherever we work across the region. We have never received any response from the Israeli government about the content of those lists.”
She said Impact-se has “specifically targeted UNRWA” over the years, adding that “on many occasions it turned out that quite a lot of the contents [of its reports] are inaccurate”. A Government spokesman said: “Allegations that UNRWA staff were involved in Oct 7 are appalling. Alongside our allies, we are calling on UNRWA to give detailed undertakings about changes in personnel policy and procedures to ensure this can never happen again.”
‘We need a new organisation to take over provision of aid to Palestinians which is not tainted’
‘It would be a disgrace for taxpayers money to be diverted towards its activities’
In 1991, Margaret Thatcher warned against taking the “peace dividend” of the end of the Cold War for granted. “All too often,” she said, “democracies rush to cut back defence and increase domestic public spending.” Today, as Russia makes gains in Ukraine and the conflict in the Middle East risks further escalation, her words sound prophetic.
For 30 years, successive governments lavished ever greater sums on the NHS and the welfare state while spending on our Armed Forces was whittled down to a miserly 2 per cent of GDP, and sometimes less. That era is now well and truly over. Geopolitical tensions have reached levels not seen since the end of the Cold War, and failure to act swiftly will leave Britain in the unenviable position of realising the true value of defence when it is already too late.
Over, too, is the era when it was sufficient to pledge a rise in defence spending from 2 per cent of GDP to 2.5 per cent. A great deal more will be needed. As the axis of evil between Russia, China and Iran coalesces, we must take a more realistic view.
Nonetheless, many politicians still appear to subscribe to the fallacy that voters care little about defence, or that they are too preoccupied to reward any party for defence spending. As Penny Mordaunt writes in these pages, such arguments are wrong. The electorate well understands that military might both acts as a deterrent and gives Britain a voice to which our allies will listen. And at such a dangerous juncture, voters will also understand that we cannot continue to run our military on the cheap.
It is no longer enough to set an arbitrary target for spending, but to work out what capabilities we need for the defence of our interests, and then to provide whatever funding is needed. During the Cold War, defence spending often hovered around 5 per cent of GDP. While we will not need to spend this much, it hints at the scale of the increase that should be aimed for.
It would be wrong, however, to presume that such spending would be funded by higher taxes. Far greater effort must be put towards squeezing public spending, and to reviving economic growth by cutting red tape. It is also true that the defence debate must focus on more than the total spend.
Few could argue the MoD has consistently deployed what funds it has to effective use. We have failed to buy military equipment off the shelf, instead collaborating with Europe to reinvent American wheels from scratch. Such projects are unsuited to the more dangerous times we find ourselves in. We must now do everything in our power to ensure we have a military our opponents fear. That will only be achieved by at last providing the money and attention it requires.
We must not fund UNRWA
Soon after reports emerged that a number of staff at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) were accused of taking part in the October 7 attack, Britain – along with many other Western nations – rightly suspended payments to the body. Senior Tory MPs are now urging the Foreign Secretary not to restore UK funding to the agency, arguing it would be a “disgrace” to do so.
They are right. The accusations of participation were not a bolt from the blue. The links between Hamas and the UNRWA are deep and well documented. Even in this current conflict, UNRWA has quoted Hamas figures on Palestinian casualties without caveat. In February, the Israel Defense Forces said it had found a terrorist data centre running partly under the agency’s headquarters. Israel’s defence minister has said that more than 1,400 of UNRWA’s 13,000 workers in Gaza are members of Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
But the problem with the agency goes deeper. It is becoming an insurmountable barrier to a peaceful solution. The 706 schools UNRWA operates have frequently fuelled an ideology defined by the rejection of Israel and helped radicalise generations of young Palestinians. A recent report compiled by the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education uncovered geography textbooks with no mention of Israel, showing “Palestine” in its place. An Islamic studies book describes the goals of jihad as “terrorising the enemy” and “achieving martyrdom”.
For too long, naive foreign donors have supported UNRWA despite it actively working against the interests of both Israelis and Palestinians. The agency’s very existence, 75 years after it was created to provide temporary relief, maintains the corrupting idea that refugee status is hereditary. Anyone who was once or is descended from a Palestinian refugee is a refugee forever, unlike refugees of any other nationality, who lose that status once they become citizens of another country. This implies that every Palestinian has a “right to return” and reside in Israel.
So long as UNRWA exists, therefore, a two-state solution is impossible. It is no longer just a humanitarian agency, but a political tool used to threaten Israel’s security. The West must replace UNRWA with another body which can provide the relief it was designed to. Lord Cameron should listen to his colleagues.