UNITED NATIONS — The UN chief on Friday appealed for funding for the embattled UN agency that helps Palestinian refugees in Gaza and elsewhere in the Middle East, accusing Israel issues evacuation orders which forces Palestinians “to move like human pinball machines through a landscape of destruction and death.”
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told a donor conference that the agency known as UNRWAis facing “a major financing gap.”
UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said at the start of the conference that the agency only has the financial resources to continue operating until August.
Finally, he told reporters that the total amount of commitments will not be known until next week, but that he is confident that the agency’s annual budget of $850 million will include enough new money to keep it running through the end of September.
UNRWA’s 30,000 staff provide education, basic health care and other development activities to approximately 6 million Palestinian refugees in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.
Lazzarini said UNRWA will be seeking funds in the coming months to keep its operations going through December, as well as emergency appeals of $1.2 billion for the war in Gaza and $460 million for the crisis in Syria, both of which are only 20% funded.
Without financial support for UNRWA, Secretary-General Guterres said, “Palestinian refugees will lose a vital lifeline and the last glimmer of hope for a better future.”
The UN chief reserved his strongest words for Israel’s ongoing military offensive in Gazawhich has had consequences for the entire Palestinian refugee population.
“The extreme level of fighting and destruction is incomprehensible and inexcusable – and the level of chaos affects every Palestinian in Gaza and all those desperately trying to help them.
“Just when we thought things couldn’t get any worse in Gaza, civilians are somehow, in horrific ways, being pushed deeper and deeper into hell,” the Secretary-General said.
Guterres said Israel’s latest evacuation orders in Gaza City were accompanied by greater suffering and bloodshed among the civilian population.
Nothing justifies Hamas’s October 7 attacks in southern Israel, he said, and “nothing justifies the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.”
The Hamas attack killed about 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and led to the abduction of about 250. Since then, Israeli ground offensives and bombardments have killed more than 38,300 people in Gaza, according to the territory’s Health Ministry, which makes no distinction between fighters and civilians in his count.
Guterres said UNRWA had not been spared: “195 UNRWA staff have been killed, the highest death toll among staff in UN history.”
For years UNRWA has been underfunded, but this year it was dramatic after Israeli allegations that 12 of the agency’s 13,000 employees in Gaza took part in the surprise Hamas attack on October 7, which continued war in Gaza. UNRWA immediately suspended them.
As a result of the allegations16 countries have cut funding to UNRWA, worth approximately $450 million.
Lazzarini told reporters that 14 donors have officially resumed funding and he believes that “very soon” a 15th country – the United Kingdom – will return.
The 16th country is the United Stateswhich was the largest donor to UNRWA. The U.S. Congress has banned all payments to the agency until March 25, 2025.
Just before the conference opened, Slovenian Foreign Minister Tanja Fajon announced that 118 countries had signed a declaration expressing their strong support for UNRWA. Lazzarini welcomed this.
He said the United States was among the signatories, although it did not attend the conference. “But it was a very good sign … indicating that they are also giving the necessary political support to the agency,” Lazzarini said.