The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), which is no longer receiving US funding, on Thursday asked other donor nations for more money, warning that its operations could suffer without a cash infusion.
“We run week by week, month by month. I know that as of today, we will be able to process our salaries in November, but have no idea if or no visibility if we will be able to process our salaries in December,” chief Philippe Lazzarini told a press conference.
Israel has barred UNRWA from operating on its soil after accusing some of its employees of participating in the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas, which triggered the bloody conflict in Gaza.
Following those allegations, the United States — historically the agency’s biggest donor — suspended its support.
In the wake of Israel’s decision, UNRWA was forced to repatriate its international staff from Gaza and the West Bank, limiting its food aid distribution abilities.
But it still employs 12,000 people in the Palestinian territories, and its services are vital to Palestinians, Lazzarini insisted.
“About 75,000 people were sheltered in 100 of our premises across the Gaza Strip,” he told reporters at the UN headquarters in New York.
“We have, over the last two years, provided more than 15 million primary health consultations. Today, the average is about 14,000 a day,” he added, also noting the agency’s joint vaccination campaign with UNICEF and the World Health Organization.
UNRWA predicts that its budget shortfall between the last quarter of 2025 and the first quarter of 2026 will be about $200 million.
“Unlike in previous years, the projected income in the first quarter of 2026 is too low to absorb a large deficit from 2025,” Lazzarini said.
“In the absence of a significant influx of new funding, the delivery of critical services to millions of Palestine refugees across the region will be compromised.”
While US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said UNRWA will have no role in postwar Gaza, Lazzarini noted that since a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas took hold, “we have expanded our services.”
UN agency for Palestinian refugees asks for more funding
https://arab.news/24r6g
UN agency for Palestinian refugees asks for more funding
- UNRWA employs 12,000 people in the Palestinian territories, and its services are vital to Palestinians
- US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said UNRWA will have no role in postwar Gaza
US lawmakers press Israel to probe strike on reporters in Lebanon
- “The IDF has made no effort, none, to seriously investigate this incident,” Welch said
- Collins called for Washington to publicly acknowledge the attack in which an American citizen was injured
WASHINGTON: Several Democratic lawmakers called Thursday for the Israeli and US governments to fully investigate a deadly 2023 attack by the Israeli military on journalists in southern Lebanon.
The October 13, 2023 airstrike killed Reuters videographer Issam Abdallah and wounded six other reporters, including two from AFP — video journalist Dylan Collins and photographer Christina Assi, who lost her leg.
“We expect the Israeli government to conduct an investigation that meets the international standards and to hold accountable those people who did this,” Senator Peter Welch told a news conference, with Collins by his side.
The lawmaker from Collins’s home state of Vermont said he had been pushing for answers for two years, first from the administration of Democratic president Joe Biden and now from the Republican White House of Donald Trump.
The Israeli government has “stonewalled at every single turn,” Welch added.
“With the Israeli government, we have been extremely patient, and we have done everything we reasonably can to obtain answers and accountability,” he said.
“The IDF has made no effort, none, to seriously investigate this incident,” Welch said, referring to the Israeli military, adding that it has told his office its investigation into the incident is closed.
Collins called for Washington to publicly acknowledge the attack in which an American citizen was injured.
“But I’d also like them to put pressure on their greatest ally in the Middle East, the Israeli government, to bring the perpetrators to account,” he said, echoing the lawmakers who called the attack a “war crime.”
“We’re not letting it go,” Vermont congresswoman Becca Balint said. “It doesn’t matter how long they stonewall us.”
AFP conducted an independent investigation which concluded that two Israeli 120mm tank shells were fired from the Jordeikh area in Israel.
The findings were corroborated by other international probes, including investigations conducted by Reuters, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders.
Unlike Welch’s assertion Thursday that the Israeli probe was over, the IDF told AFP in October that “findings regarding the event have not yet been concluded.”
