Follow-up – Al-Rashid
UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said on Tuesday that the agency has sufficient funds to run its operations until the end of May only, after a number of donors suspended their funding due to Israeli accusations that some employees participated in the Hamas attack on October 7.
Lazzarini added in an interview with Reuters in Geneva: “What I can say today is that we can operate our operations until the end of May.” He continued, “But this also shows how bad the organization’s financial situation is.”
Yesterday, Monday, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, defended the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), stressing that it is “the only ray of light for millions” of Palestinian refugees and “a lifeline of hope and dignity,” and taking it away would be “a cruel and unfathomable matter.”
“We must strive to maintain the flow of the unique services provided by UNRWA because that keeps hope alive, and in a dark world, UNRWA is the only ray of light for millions of people,” Guterres said at a press conference in Al-Wahdat camp for Palestinian refugees in Amman.
The statement came as UNRWA announced that Israel had permanently prevented it from delivering aid to the northern Gaza Strip, which is on the verge of famine.
At the end of January, Israel accused 12 of the agency’s approximately 13,000 employees in Gaza of involvement in the Hamas attack on Israeli territory on October 7.
Following the accusations, about 15 countries, most notably the United States, suspended their contributions to the agency, putting it in a difficult financial situation. But since then, several countries have resumed disbursing their contributions.
Source: Arabic
