US says $300,000 for UNRWA frozen as part of pause in funding

US State Department spokesman Matt Miller says that roughly $300,000 earmarked for UNRWA has been withheld following the Biden administration’s decision to suspend funding to the UN relief agency for Palestinian refugees amid allegations that roughly a dozen of its members participated in Hamas’s October 7 terror onslaught.

However, the US was on pace to donate about 1,000 times that amount by the end of the fiscal year in September.

Roughly $121 million in US funding was already transferred to UNRWA between October 1 and last Friday’s decision to suspend funding pending an investigation.

Typically, the US provides UNRWA with between $300 and $400 million annually, making it the world’s largest donor to the agency, Miller notes.

The next major payment was not slated to be made until the summer but will depend on the funds allocated by Congress in the supplemental funding package and continuing resolution, which both have not yet been passed.

Miller says the US will make a decision regarding the frozen $300,000, as well as all future funding to UNRWA, based on the UN’s investigation into the allegations against its staff members.

Highlighting how serious the allegations were, the State Department spokesman says UNRWA already made the decision to fire eight of its staffers and to suspend two others.

The US in its Friday announcement regarding the funding suspension said allegations were made against 12 UNRWA staffers. The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that Israeli intelligence links 1,200 UNRWA staffers to Hamas.

Despite the allegations, Miller reiterates that the US still supports UNRWA’s “critical” work providing humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza.

“There is no other humanitarian player in Gaza who can provide food and water and medicine to at the scale that UNRWA does,” he insists, adding this is why the US wants the UN to thoroughly and speedily conduct its investigation so that such conduct by agency employees can never happen again and it can continue carrying out its work in Gaza.