EU wavers over how to best help Gaza’s main aid agency
BRUSSELS — With the embattled U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees in Gaza teetering on the brink of financial collapse, one of its biggest donors is wavering over whether to extend it a lifeline worth tens of millions of dollars within the next few weeks.
Israel’s allegations that 12 employees of the aid agency known as UNRWA participated in the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks in southern Israel shook the organization last month. Several countries suspended funding worth some $440 million, almost half of the agency’s annual budget. Two U.N. investigations are underway.
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 $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.
The audit would focus “specifically on the control systems needed to prevent the possible involvement of (UNRWA) staff in terrorist activities,” the European Commission said. The commission also insists on “a review of all UNRWA staff” to confirm they had no role in the attacks.
Of the U.N. 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 in 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 Sunday, a day after discussing the issue with the bloc’s foreign ministers.
“The lives of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, not only in Gaza, are at stake,” Borrell warned.
Asked Monday which experts had been appointed, by whom, and what progress had been made on the audit, the commission could provide no clear answer. “We don’t have additional information to share on this,” spokesperson Arianna Podesta said.
In a statement emailed to The Associated Press, UNRWA said it “is in regular contact with the European Commission on the way forward, including the audit.” It said it’s “thankful for the EU’s essential support to the agency’s humanitarian action in Gaza.”