Israel has decided to suspend its affiliations with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) due to their terrorist ties, a spokesperson for the Prime Minister’s Office said on Tuesday.
“UNRWA are part of the problem, and we will now stop working with them,” stated David Mencer of the Prime Minister’s Office’s National Public Diplomacy Directorate.
“We are actively phasing out the use of UNRWA because they perpetuate the conflict rather than trying to alleviate it,” he said.
Israel announced in January that its own investigation into the humanitarian agency had discovered that a dozen of its employees had participated in Hamas’ October 7 assault on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,200 Israelis and the abduction of 253 civilians into the Gaza Strip. The US and nearly a dozen other countries suspended financing for the discredited agency, but the EU, Norway, and Canada have since restored funding.
Shurat HaDin, a Tel Aviv-based organization that represents the relatives of victims and survivors of the Hamas massacre, is demanding that UNRWA be designated as a terrorist organization following a terror tunnel that was recently discovered under UNRWA headquarters in Gaza.
“Posing as a humanitarian organization, UNRWA encourages a false and dangerous historical narrative,” said Shurat HaDin CEO Darshan-Leitner.
“They have also become the central headquarters of a terrorist organization, some of whose workers murdered innocent Jews with their own hands.”
