Palestinians in Beirut protest UNRWA fund suspension

Dozens of Palestinians gathered Tuesday in front of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency headquarters in Beirut after several countries decided to suspend funding for the U.N. Palestinian refugee agency.

A number of key donors -- including the United States, Germany and Japan -- had announced they are suspending funding to the agency over Israel's accusations that some of its staff were involved in the October 7 Hamas attack.

The protesters held posters that show the Israeli bombardment on Gaza and demanded that countries resume funding of the agency.

"Stopping funding for UNRWA threatens the future of Palestinian refugees," some posters read, while an elderly woman held a poster saying "UNRWA, my right until I return."

They also demanded that staff who were fired in the Gaza Strip over allegations that they took part in the Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel be returned to their jobs.

Aid groups condemned Tuesday the decision to suspend funding UNRWA, pointing to a "worsening humanitarian catastrophe" and "looming famine" in Gaza.

The U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East was established to provide aid to the estimated 700,000 Palestinians who fled or were driven out of what is now Israel during the 1948 war surrounding the country's creation.

The Palestinians say the refugees and their descendants, who now number nearly 6 million across the Middle East, have the right to return to their homes.

Israel has refused, because if the right of return were to be fully implemented it would result in a Palestinian majority inside its borders. The fate of the refugees and their descendants was among the thorniest issues in the peace process, which ground to a halt in 2009.

UNRWA operates schools, health clinics, infrastructure projects and aid programs in refugee camps that now resemble dense urban neighborhoods in Gaza, the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. It has 13,000 employees in Gaza alone, the vast majority of them Palestinians.

In Gaza, where some 85% of territory's 2.3 million people have fled their homes, over 1 million are sheltering in UNRWA schools and other facilities.

Israel has long railed against the agency, accusing it of tolerating or even collaborating with Hamas and of perpetuating the 75-year-old Palestinian refugee crisis. The Israeli government has accused Hamas and other militant groups of siphoning off aid and using U.N. facilities for military purposes.

UNRWA denies those allegations and says it took swift action against the employees accused of taking part in the attack. The United States and eight other Western nations that together provided more than half of UNRWA's budget in 2022 nevertheless suspended their funding to the agency.

The United States, which was the first country to suspend funding, is the biggest donor to UNRWA, providing it with $340 million in 2022. The United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Finland have also suspended aid. The nine countries together provided nearly 60% of UNRWA's budget in 2022.

"Our humanitarian operation, on which 2 million people depend as a lifeline in Gaza, is collapsing," UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini Lazzarini posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.

He expressed shock that countries would suspend aid "based on alleged behavior of a few individuals and as the war continues, needs are deepening & famine looms."