OSLO: The Norwegian government said Thursday that it would contribute $24 million to the UN agency that helps looks after Palestinian refugees, the same day that Israel banned the group from operating on Israeli territory.
“Gaza is in ruins, and UNRWA’s help is more necessary than ever,” Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide said in a statement. “It is extremely dramatic for Palestine that Israeli laws come into force that in practice can prevent UNRWA from working.”
Starting Thursday, UNRWA is banned from operating on Israeli soil and contact between it and Israeli officials is forbidden. Israel’s supreme court rejected late Wednesday a challenge to the ban.
UNRWA has provided support for Palestinian refugees around the Middle East for over 70 years, and it says it has brought in 60 percent of the food aid that has reached Gaza since the start of Israel’s war with Hamas in 2023.
But Israeli officials have repeatedly accused it of being a cover for militant groups and undermining the country’s security. The hostility intensified in the wake of Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, with accusations that a small number of UNRWA employees participated in the assault.
A series of investigations, including one led by former French foreign minister Catherine Colonna, found some “neutrality-related issues” at UNRWA, but said Israel had not provided evidence for its headline allegation.
Many donors cut their support for UNRWA following the accusations, though almost all have resumed their funding.
Relations between Norway and Israel have worsened in recent years, especially after the Scandinavian country recognized a Palestinian state last May along with Spain and Ireland.
Norway says sending $24m to UNRWA after Israel ban
https://arab.news/bc5gv
Norway says sending $24m to UNRWA after Israel ban
- “Gaza is in ruins, and UNRWA’s help is more necessary than ever,” Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide said
- “It is extremely dramatic for Palestine that Israeli laws come into force that in practice can prevent UNRWA from working“
Take back and prosecute your jailed Daesh militants, Iraq tells Europe
RAQQA: Baghdad on Friday urged European states to repatriate and prosecute their citizens who fought for Daesh, and who are now being moved to Iraq from detention camps in Syria.
Europeans were among 150 Daesh prisoners transferred so far by the US military from Kurdish custody in Syria. They were among an estimated 7,000 militants due to be moved across the border to Iraq as the Kurdish-led force that has held them for years relinquishes swaths of territory to the advancing Syrian army.
In a telephone call on Friday with French President Emmanuel Macron, Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani said European countries should take back and prosecute their nationals.
An Iraqi security official said the 150 so far transferred to Iraq were “all leaders of the Daesh group, and some of the most notorious criminals.” They included “Europeans, Asians, Arabs and Iraqis,” he said.
Another Iraqi security source said the group comprised “85 Iraqis and 65 others of various nationalities, including Europeans, Sudanese, Somalis, and people from the Caucasus region.”
They all took part in Daesh operations in Iraq, he said, and were now being held at a prison in Baghdad.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that “non-Iraqi terrorists will be in Iraq temporarily.”
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces jailed thousands of militant fighters and detained tens of thousands of their relatives in camps as it pushed out Daesh in 2019 after five years of fighting.
