A Palestinian receives bags of flour distributed by UNRWA in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, on November 21, 2023.Ibrahim Abu Mustafa/Reuters
Canada’s U.N. Ambassador Bob Rae on Sunday called on leaders to avoid turning Ottawa’s move to cut funding to the main U.N. agency responsible for aid to the Palestinians into a “political football.” It was definitely a good intention.
But as a former Liberal MP and a witness to the Stephen Harper-era pigskin-throwing incident in Ottawa over Canada’s position on the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), Ley said: You should know it’s too late for that.
Last week’s decision to suspend funding comes after the Israeli government claimed that at least 12 UNRWA personnel took part in the unspeakably horrific Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, which sparked the current Gaza war. It was received and carried out.
No other United Nations organization is more politically controversial than UNRWA. UNRWA has a lot to say, considering that the list includes punching bags such as the World Health Organization and the International Monetary Fund. Since its founding in 1949, when it was tasked with providing humanitarian relief to 700,000 Palestinian refugees displaced during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, UNWRA has been mired in controversy, scandal and corruption.
The only shocking thing about Israel’s latest accusations is that authorities have refuted the allegations, calling them “shocking.” It is an open secret that the 13,000 UNRWA personnel in Gaza, nearly all of whom are Palestinian, are filled with Hamas supporters. No one would have been surprised that some of them turned out to be terrorists.
On Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing Israeli sources, that an estimated 10 percent of UNRWA personnel in the Gaza Strip have ties to Hamas or the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. UNRWA male personnel are even more likely to have ties to Hamas than the male population of the Gaza Strip as a whole.
After Hamas took control of Gaza in 2007, UNRWA criticized the schools, including NGO Monitor and UN Watch, for indoctrinating students with anti-Israel ideology and serving as bases and weapons warehouses for Hamas militants. I faced constant criticism from home. In 2010, Mr. Harper’s Conservative government announced that it would end the $20 million annual lump sum funding that Canada provides to UNRWA by redirecting it to specific aid projects in the region. was taken up. That same year, Canada lost its bid for a seat on the United Nations Security Council.
One of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government’s first foreign policy actions after the election was to restore Canada’s funding to UNRWA. “We want to see Palestinian refugee children in classrooms where they learn universal values of tolerance and respect,” Marie-Claude Bibeau, then-Minister of International Development, said when announcing the $25 million grant. . Such wishful thinking belied the reality on the ground in the Palestinian refugee camps where UNRWA operates in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.
The Conservatives then accused Trudeau of trying to curry favor with Israel’s enemies in his own ultimately unsuccessful campaign to win a seat on the United Nations Security Council. But until the latest allegations surfaced last week, current Conservative leader Pierre Poièvre said the Liberals had renewed funding for UNRWA in June (announcing $100 million over four years) and that October 7 When he further increased subsidies to the agency after that date, he treated the Liberal Party uncritically.
That changed when the Trudeau government, along with the United States and more than a dozen other countries, suspended funding to UNRWA pending the outcome of a UN-led investigation into allegations involving its staff. “Prime Minister Trudeau should be ashamed of the way he used our funds to fund this terrorist organization,” Poièvre said of UNRWA in a speech to Conservative MPs on Sunday.
That was too much. However, the Liberal Party long ignored accusations of pro-Hamas behavior against UNRWA staff and served to turn Canada’s funding to UNRWA into a political football.
In November, when independent MP Kevin Vuong questioned Ottawa’s move to increase funding for UNRWA in the House of Commons, International Development Minister Ahmed Hussen could barely contain his feelings of disdain at the question. Ta. “At this critical time, trusted institutions like UNRWA deserve more support, not less,” Hussen responded, adding that Buon was “vulnerable at a time of need.” He accused them of trying to score political points against the people.
Last week, Hussen said:alarm“Canada takes these reports extremely seriously and is working closely with UNRWA and other donors on this issue,” he added, referring to Israel’s claims.
It is a tragedy that this situation has arisen. Despite the heroic work of most UNRWA personnel, it may already be too late to save it.