US Has Given $121 Million to Controversial UN Palestine Relief Agency Since October: State Department

A truck marked with United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) logo crosses into Egypt from Gaza at the Rafah border crossing during a temporary truce between Hamas and Israel, on Nov. 27, 2023. Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Reuters

The United States has sent $121 million since Oct. 1, 2023, to a U.N. relief agency believed to have ties with Hamas, according to the State Department.

The Biden administration had approved an additional amount of more than $300,000 for the organization, which provides assistance to Palestinian refugees and civilians in the Gaza Strip, but it has been suspended, according to spokesperson Matthew Miller.

The numbers, revealed by Mr. Miller on Jan. 30, come as Israel had alleged there were a dozen members of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) who took part in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack on the Jewish state.

UNRWA has since fired those employees.

Additionally, “any UNRWA employee who was involved in acts of terror will be held accountable, including through criminal prosecution,” UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said in a Jan. 26 statement.

The United States is the largest contributor to UNRWA.

Mr. Miller didn’t give the exact amount of funding that has been suspended—a move announced on Jan. 26 in response to the allegation of UNRWA employees being a part of the Oct. 7, 2023, attack, which included Hamas launching rockets from Gaza, which it controls, into Israel and invading the Jewish state, resulting in the largest mass-murder of Jews than on any single day since the Holocaust.

Additionally, according to Mr. Miller, the amount of funding that the United States would have given to UNRWA in the 2024 fiscal year is uncertain, as the government is being funded by a continuing resolution while Congress seeks to pass long-term appropriations. The federal fiscal calendar begins on Oct. 1 and ends on Sept. 30. In early January, Congress passed a continuing resolution, with funding for some government agencies through Feb. 2 and others through March 8.

The Trump administration had ceased U.S. funding for UNRWA, but the Biden administration reinstated it.

UNRWA has long come under fire for perpetuating hatred of Israel through its schools and textbooks. Also, Hamas has a history of storing rockets in UNRWA schools in Gaza.

Nonetheless, Mr. Miller reiterated that UNRWA is a critical partner in dealing with the conflict amid the war between Israel and Hamas.

“You have heard us say, and the Secretary [of State Antony Blinken] traveled and met with members of UNRWA in the region, how important the work that UNRWA does is to Gaza and to civilians in Gaza,” he said. “And it’s important that work be continued.”

Mr. Blinken traveled to Israel during his Mideast trip in January.

Mr. Miller called on UNRWA to take its internal investigation “seriously.”

While Mr. Miller has touted UNRWA, critics have said the U.N. agency has been anything but clean.

“The latest scandal around UNRWA is just a drop in the ocean compared to the totality of its malfeasance over the issue of funding,” foreign policy analyst and human rights attorney Irina Tsukerman told The Epoch Times on Jan. 29.

“UNRWA’s corruption and misdirection of funding toward terrorism is a feature, not a bug.”

“Reinstating funding for UNRWA was a mistake,“ Christians United for Israel founder and Chairman John Hagee said in a Jan. 26 statement. ”We knew UNRWA was complicit in Hamas’s antisemitic indoctrination of generations of Gazans, but it’s clear they’ve taken the next logical step: joining Hamas’s terrorist ranks.”

Arthur Maserjian, chief of staff at the Combat Antisemitism Movement, said in a Jan. 29 statement that “it is now abundantly clear to all that funding UNRWA means funding terrorism, and this runs counter to America’s national principles and interests.”

The agency doesn’t solve the Palestinian problem, critics say.

“The agency was designed to perpetuate Palestinians as a unique type of refugee who cannot be integrated into the Arab world and who has claims to ancestral lands denied to everyone else around the world who has had to live with the reality of geopolitical changes and lost wars,” Ms. Tsukerman said.

UNRWA’s definition of what constitutes a refugee defies the conventional definition as, for example, descendants of refugees and those who have settled outside UNRWA refugee camps.

“Years of ignoring anti-Israel indoctrination and terrorist incitement has created a situation where now UNRWA buildings act as conduits for Hamas tunnels, and teachers and staff designated as social workers take part in kidnapping and murdering Israelis,” the American Jewish Congress said in a Jan. 29 statement.

At the end of the day, Ms. Tsukerman said, “firing a few staffers and reviewing hiring procedures for local operatives will not suffice,” and UNRWA should cease to exist.

The American Jewish Congress echoed Ms. Tsukerman.

“UNRWA has reached a point of no return, as we have said before,“ the group said. ”A mechanism that replaces this agency could incorporate the experiences of other United Nations and international agencies and plug the holes in UNRWA’s checkered record that has been identified recently.”