The renewal of funding was jointly announced by the German Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Economic Cooperation and Development on Wednesday. According to The Guardian, Germany was one of nineteen countries that cut funding to UNRWA following the Israeli government’s claim that the agency’s staff were involved in the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack.
However, Israel did not support its accusations with evidence. UNRWA, which is the main source of humanitarian aid for the Palestinians, has deprived these countries of millions of dollars by suspending their funding at a time when, according to reports there, the health system in Gaza is collapsing, famine is imminent and the death toll is rising. Several important donor countries such as Australia, Canada, Sweden or Japan therefore resumed funding even before Monday’s release of Colonna’s report.
The report revealed that UNRWA regularly supplies lists of its staff to Israel for verification and “the Government of Israel has not informed UNRWA of any concerns raised by them since 2011”. The report also proposed other means of ensuring the neutrality of the office’s employees, such as strengthening the internal audit function or improving external supervision of project management. According to Berlin, UNRWA should implement them as quickly as possible.
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Germany partially restored the funding of the accused office even before the publication of this report. However, the state’s finances were directed only to Palestinian refugee communities outside the Gaza Strip. Berlin waited until the end of Colonna’s investigation to make a decision on restoring the flow of funds to the war-torn territory. The attack, which Israel says involved UNRWA staff, is being investigated separately by the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services, and that investigation remains ongoing.
Another state that waited for the conclusions of Colonna’s investigation with the renewal of funding is Great Britain, which provided 35 million pounds (a billion crowns) to UNRWA last fiscal year. However, its representatives have not yet responded to Monday’s release of the report.
The reaction of the United States, which before the publication of the accusations was the largest donor to the office and whose share represented 30% of UNRWA’s funds, is also being closely watched. For the year 2023, the USA sent UNRWA 10 billion crowns, but on the basis of Israeli accusations, the funding of the office was banned by Congress.
In response to the release of the report, Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Oren Marmorstein said the investigation into Colonna was insufficient and was “an attempt to avoid the problem rather than confront it.” He further reiterated the claim that more than 2,130 UNRWA staff members are members of Hamas or Palestinian Jihad. Nordic institutes involved in the investigation said that UNRWA had repeatedly asked Israel for the names of these alleged terrorists in its ranks, but Israel had not provided any.
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