A Palestinian man stands in front of the emblem of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) in Gaza City in 2018. (Credit: Illustration photo Saïd Khatib/AFP/Getty Images)
On Saturday, the US Congress adopted at the last minute a text aimed at funding the federal government until September and preventing the world's leading economic power from slipping into a "shutdown" — that is, a paralysis of its public services — according to information relayed by press agencies and several American, Arab and Israeli media outlets. But the elected representatives meeting in Washington also took the opportunity to take a much more controversial measure: a ban on all direct funding from the United States to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA.
UNRWA has been at the heart of a controversy since Israel in January accused 12 of its 13,000 or so employees in Gaza of involvement in the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7. The ban will remain in place for one year, until March 2025.
According to the investigative magazine The Intercept, the bill also contains a provision limiting aid to the Palestinian Authority, which governs the occupied West Bank, if "the Palestinians initiate or actively support an investigation authorized by the International Criminal Court (ICC) that subjects Israeli nationals to investigation for alleged crimes committed against Palestinians."
The bill still has to be sent to President Joe Biden for his signature, which he is expected to provide on Saturday.
The bill's passing is a major blow for UNRWA. In 2022, the United States was UNRWA's main donor, with an overall contribution of $344 million. In June 2023, before the start of the war in Gaza, it announced an envelope of more than $153 million, and it was the first to suspend its funding of the agency at the end of January after it launched an investigation to verify the Israeli accusations.
Israeli reaction
Israel's Foreign Minister Israel Katz welcomed the passing of the bill, taking to his X account to urge countries around the world to follow the example of the United States and cut their funding to UNRWA.
"The historic ban on US funding of UNRWA, which was passed today with overwhelming bipartisan support, demonstrates what we have known all along: UNRWA is part of the problem and cannot be part of the solution. UNRWA will not be part of the landscape of Gaza after the fall of Hamas," the minister wrote. The senior official also claimed that "thousands of UNRWA employees are involved in Hamas's terrorist activities and their facilities have been used for terrorist purposes."
The passing of this bill comes at a time when the Israeli offensive in Gaza is coming under increasing international criticism. More than 32,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to Hamas; aid agencies are sounding alarm bells at the risk of widespread famine; and the material damage has impacted more than 121,000 homes and infrastructure facilities in the enclave. Israel's plans for an offensive in Rafah, a town in the south of the besieged enclave where some 1.5 million refugees have fled to escape the fighting, were at the heart of discussions in Tel Aviv on Friday between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
On Friday, UNRWA chief, Philippe Lazzarini, announced that all the Nordic countries had resumed funding the agency after cutting it off at the beginning of the year following accusations by the Israeli government.
Contacted by the Al-Jazeera TV channel, Maya Berry, executive director of the Arab American Institute (AAI), described the adoption of the bill as "an incredible moral failure."
"Our political process has chosen to cut US funding to the only entity capable of responding to the level of suffering and the scale of suffering in Gaza," Al-Jazeera quotes Berry as saying.