The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), which has been an essential lifeline for millions of Palestinians since it was set up in 1949, has recently been rocked by a controversy linked to the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack. The agency – which has long been criticized by Israel and is almost entirely funded by voluntary contributions from governments – must now investigate the role some of its employees allegedly played in the attack which the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas carried out on Israeli territory.
The UNRWA was established in late December 1949 by the UN General Assembly following the first Arab-Israeli war, which broke out immediately after the creation of Israel in May 1948. Its mandate is to provide humanitarian assistance and protection to Palestinian refugees who are registered in the agency's areas of operations, "pending a just and lasting solution to their plight."
More than 700,000 Palestinians were driven from or fled their land between April and August 1948 – when Israel was created – according to the UN. These people, as well as their descendants, have refugee status. The UNRWA has become the sole guarantor of their international status by default. It not only operates in the Palestinian territories, but also in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria.
Some 5.9 million Palestinians are registered with the UNRWA and can receive services encompassing education, healthcare, social services, camp infrastructure, microfinance and emergency aid, including in times of armed conflict. Over 543,000 children are enrolled in UNRWA schools.
In all, there are around sixty refugee camps managed by this UN agency, including nineteen in the West Bank, a Palestinian territory which has been occupied by Israel since 1967.
In the Gaza Strip, where Hamas came to power in 2007, the humanitarian situation was already critical before the start of the ongoing war between Israel and the Islamist movement. According to UN data from August 2023, 63% of the population were suffering from food insecurity and were dependent on international aid. Over 80% were living below the poverty line.
The small territory – squeezed in between Israel, the Mediterranean Sea and Egypt – contains eight camps and around 1.7 million refugees: in other words, the overwhelming majority of the population, according to the UN. The total population of Gaza is around 2.4 million.
Of the 30,000 people the agency employs, 13,000 work in the Gaza Strip, spread across more than 300 facilities covering an area of 365 km², according to the organization's website.
In 2018, the United States under Donald Trump, the leading contributor to the UNRWA, terminated its $300 million annual financial aid. Israel, which had welcomed the American decision, has accused the organization of "perpetuating the [Israeli-Palestinian] conflict" by promoting the idea – to which it has objected – that many Palestinians are refugees with a "right of return" to the land in question. Palestinian leaders, meanwhile, have pointed out that the United States provides Israel with more than $3 billion (€2.76 billion) in annual military aid.
In May 2019, Trump's Middle East envoy called for the end of UNRWA, accusing it of having "failed the Palestinian people." The agency replied that it could not be held responsible for the stalled peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. Washington resumed payments from 2021, following Joe Biden's election.
On Friday, the UNRWA dismissed several employees (twelve, according to the United States) who had been accused of involvement in the October 7 Hamas attack on Israeli territory. The alleged acts committed were not specified, and an investigation has been opened.
On Saturday, Israel declared that it wanted the UN agency to have no role whatsoever in Gaza after the war. Washington "temporarily" suspended all additional funding to the UN agency, with several other donor countries following suit on Saturday.
In 2022, funds allocated to the UNRWA from the regular UN budget and contributions from other UN entities amounted to $44.6 million. The top five government donors are, in order, the United States, Germany, the European Union, Sweden and Norway. Other notable contributors include Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Switzerland and France.
Translation of an original article published in French on lemonde.fr; the publisher may only be liable for the French version.