Austria joins countries freezing funds to UNRWA over Oct. 7 accusations

Austria is suspending payments to the United Nations’ Palestinian aid agency, UNRWA, pending a full investigation into accusations that its employees were involved in the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, the Austrian Foreign Ministry said on Monday.

Austria donated some $8 million to UNRWA in 2022, making it the 22nd largest funder of the agency for Palestinian refugees.

“We call on UNRWA and the United Nations to conduct a comprehensive, swift and complete investigation into the allegations,” the ministry said in a statement.

Austria joins Britain, Germany, the United States, Australia, and Canada, among others, in pausing funding to the aid agency, a critical source of support for people in Gaza. UNRWA said on Friday it had fired several employees over the accusations.

On October 7, some 3,000 terrorists stormed across the border into Israel, overrunning military bases and communities and killing some 1,200 people, most of them civilians slaughtered in their homes and at a music festival. The attackers also took 253 hostages to Gaza, where about half remain.

The New York Times on Sunday published a report detailing some of the accusations made by Israel, stating that employees from the UN agency kidnapped Israelis, transported ammunition and the body of a dead soldier, and took part in a murderous assault on a kibbutz.

Allegations of the involvement of @UNRWA staff in #Hamas’ barbaric terrorist attacks against #Israel on 7 October are shocking and alarming.

The @UN must be beyond reproach. This is a question of credibility.

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— MFA Austria (@MFA_Austria) January 26, 2024

UNRWA provides services, such as education and healthcare, in 10 Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan – the only Arab country where Palestinians have been granted citizenship. According to the agency’s data, about 18 percent of the country’s two million Palestinians and their descendants still live in camps.

There are today 58 designated refugee camps where UNRWA operates, in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip.

The agency’s supporters say the allegations against it aim to diminish the long-festering refugee issue. Last week, UNRWA’s Commissioner General Philippe Lazzarini said he would appoint an independent entity to look into the claims — both “what is true or untrue” and “what is politically motivated.” He also said the accusations were hurting the agency’s already stretched operations.

Israeli officials and their allies — including in the US Congress — have repeatedly alleged over the years that UNRWA allows anti-Israeli incitement to be taught in its hundreds of schools and that some of its staff collaborate with Hamas. The Trump administration suspended funding to the agency in 2018, but US President Joe Biden restored it.

Despite Israel’s long-running objections to UNWRA, it also continues to cooperate with the agency, reflecting a split in policy in Jerusalem.

Foreign Minister Israel Katz has said the body “must be replaced with agencies dedicated to genuine peace and development” after the Israel-Hamas war, and has called for Lazzarini’s resignation.

At the same time, Channel 13 published documentation showing that Israel was directly supplying flour and other goods to UNWRA in Gaza.

Meanwhile, three diplomatic sources told the Israel Hayom daily that Jerusalem had the information on the UNRWA workers for weeks but had held back on distributing publicly it because “there was an understanding in the Israeli political system that UNWRA must be preserved in Gaza, because it is the only functioning body in Gaza and without it, the chaos would be even greater.”

The paper claimed that it was not clear why UNWRA had suddenly announced the investigation into its workers and speculated that it was because it was due to be publicly exposed in an upcoming US congressional hearing.