Israel-Gaza war: aid agencies ‘outraged’ by ‘reckless’ decision to cut UNRWA funding

International aid agencies have said they are “deeply concerned and outraged” at the “reckless” decision by major donors to cut funding to a UN Palestinian aid agency after Israel accused some of its workers of taking part in Hamas’ 7 October attack.

“We are shocked by the reckless decision to cut a lifeline for an entire population by some of the very countries that had called for aid in Gaza to be stepped up and for humanitarians to be protected while doing their job,” the coalition of 21 agencies, including Oxfam, Save the Children and ActionAid, said in a statement on Monday.

More than 10 western countries including the US, UK and Germany said they would suspend funding to UNRWA, which provides aid to more than 5.6 million Palestinian refugees across the Middle East, after the agency said it had launched a probe into 12 staff members who allegedly took part in abductions and killings on 7 October.

The agency has sacked nine of those accused. Two others are missing and one is dead. The UN in New York has also launched a high-level investigation into the alleged acts, which its secretary general, António Guterres, described as “abhorrent”.

In their Monday statement, the aid agencies noted that 2 million civilians, over half of them children, rely on UNRWA aid in Gaza. “The population faces starvation, looming famine and an outbreak of disease under Israel’s continued indiscriminate bombardment and deliberate deprivation of aid in Gaza,” they said.

“If the funding suspensions are not reversed we may see a complete collapse of the already restricted humanitarian response in Gaza,” it added, pointing out that the aid cuts came directly after the international court of justice (ICJ) ordered Israel to provide immediate humanitarian assistance to Gaza.

UNRWA said on Monday it would be unable to continue operations in Gaza and across the region beyond the end of February if funding were not resumed.

Guterres is due to meet with major UNRWA donors in New York on Tuesday, UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said.

Guterres spoke on Monday with the leaders of Jordan and Egypt and also met with the head of UN internal investigations to ensure that an inquiry into the Israeli accusations “will be done swiftly and as efficiently as possible,” Dujarric said.

Washington would be looking very hard at the steps UNRWA takes in response to the allegations, US secretary of state Antony Blinken said at a news conference, describing the allegations as “highly credible” and “deeply, deeply troubling.“

Asked under what circumstances and how soon the US could consider resuming support for UNRWA, Blinken said, “It is imperative that UNRWA immediately, as it said it would, investigate, that it hold people accountable as necessary, and that it review its procedures.”

National security council spokesperson John Kirby also appeared to leave the door open for a resumption of aid. He said it would be wrong to “impugn the good work of a whole agency because of the potential bad actions here by a small number.” UNRWA employs about 13,000 people in Gaza.

An Israeli intelligence dossier seen by Reuters alleges that about 190 UNRWA employees, including teachers, have doubled as Hamas or Islamic Jihad militants. It has names and pictures of 11 them. A 12th Palestinian whose name and picture are provided is said to have no factional membership and to have infiltrated Israel on 7 October. The UN has not formally received a copy of the dossier, Dujarric said.

The dossier said one of the 11 is a school counsellor who helped his son abduct a woman during the Hamas infiltration in which Israel says 1,200 people were killed and 253 kidnapped.

Another, an UNRWA social worker, is accused of unspecified involvement in the transfer to Gaza of a slain Israeli soldier’s corpse and of coordinating the movements of pickup trucks used by the raiders and of weapons supplies.

A third Palestinian in the dossier is accused of taking part in a rampage in the Israeli border village Beeri, one-tenth of whose residents were killed. A fourth is accused of participating in an attack on Reim, the site of an army base that was overrun and also a rave where more than 360 revellers died.

Also in the list of 12 men are an UNRWA teacher accused of arming himself with an anti-tank rocket, another teacher accused of filming a hostage and the manager of a shop in an UNRWA school accused of opening a war-room for Islamic Jihad.

Israeli foreign minister Israel Katz said he had cancelled a Wednesday meeting between Israeli officials and UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini, and called on the UNRWA head to resign.

Israel has long criticised the UN agency, accusing it of perpetuating conflict by discouraging the resettlement of refugees and on occasions in the past has said agency staff took part in armed attacks.

UNRWA has denied these accusations, describing its role as relief only.

Palestinian prime minister Mohammad Shtayyeh accused Israel of a “premeditated political attack” on UNRWA and called for restoration of aid funds.

Chris Gunness, who was UNRWA’s director of communications for 13 years until 2020, accused Israel of “news management”.

“It is likely the Israelis have had this information for months and, in the interests of justice and closure for the grieving Israeli families, they could have presented it to the UN much earlier. Instead, they chose to put it out the day after the international court of justice’s ruling,” he said.

He said the funding withdrawal was “collective punishment – like cutting funding to the NHS because of the actions of Lucy Letby”, a British nurse convicted of murdering seven newborn babies.

More than 26,000 people have been killed in Israel’s military campaign against Hamas in Gaza, the enclave’s health ministry said. With flows of aid like food and medicine just a trickle of pre-conflict levels, deaths from preventable diseases as well as risk of famine are growing, aid workers say.

Reuters and Associated Press contributed to this report