UNRWA faces collapse after complaints of staff joined terror attack against Israel

United Nations, Jan 30: Major donors are sending one of the world organisation’s oldest and largest relief operations to the brink of collapse after disclosures that the employees of the organisation set up to help Palestinian refugees took part in the October 7 terrorist attack by Hamas on Israel.
“It’s not so much the existence of the agency is at stake. It’s the lives of the people that the agency serves that’s at stake,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said on Monday about the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). It will run out of funds past next month, he added.
UNRWA and the UN itself have been shaken by Israel’s allegations that 12 staffers of the organisation joined in the attacks on Israel. A dossier shared with several news media organisations by Israel also asserted that at least 190 UNRWA staff were working for Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The UN immediately fired nine of those accused of participating in the attacks, one was dead and the identities of two were being ascertained, Guterres said on Sunday. He added that he was “horrified” by “the abhorrent alleged acts of these staff members” and it “must have consequences”. Dujarric said that the UN’s Office of Internal Oversight Services has been activated to investigate the allegations. On the other side of the ledger, at least 152 of the 13,000 UNWRA relief workers in Gaza have been killed in the Israeli attack on Gaza. After the US and at least a dozen other governments announced that they were freezing aid to UNRWA, Guterres said it will run out of funds next month to meet “the dire needs of the desperate population” of two million in Gaza. The US is the largest contributor sending nearly $344 million to UNRWA. (IANS)