BEIRUT: Dozens demonstrated Tuesday outside the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees in Beirut against several countries’ decision to suspend funding for the body after the Zionist entity charged some staff participated in Hamas’s October 7 attack.

At least 12 key donor countries have said they will halt funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency following the accusations, while UNRWA has fired several employees and promised a thorough investigation into the claims.

"We are afraid for the future of UNRWA,” said Palestinian refugee Abu Mohammed, 65, who attended the protest. "All our children study in UNRWA schools and most of our medical care is covered by the agency,” he said, urging countries "to reverse their decision”. "The suspension of aid would be catastrophic from a social and humanitarian perspective,” he added.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) is charged with providing humanitarian aid and protection for Palestinian refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including east Jerusalem. Tiny Lebanon hosts an estimated 250,000 Palestinian refugees, according to UNRWA, while almost double that number are registered for the organization’s services. Most live in poverty.

"Even though I have a job, UNRWA helps me pay my rent and buy food,” said Dima Dahouk, 40, a Palestinian and the sole breadwinner for her four children. "My son who dreams of becoming an engineer had to temporarily drop out of school” to help support the family, she said. "The situation is terrible,” she added, amid a four-year economic crisis in Lebanon that has plunged most of the population into poverty.

Aid groups on Tuesday condemned the countries that suspended funding to UNRWA, pointing to a "worsening humanitarian catastrophe” and "looming famine” in Gaza. The two dozen top charities, including Oxfam and Save the Children, stressed the United Nations Relief and Works Agency was the main provider of aid to millions of Palestinians in Gaza and the wider Middle East.

"The suspension of funding by donor states will impact life-saving assistance for over two million civilians, over half of whom are children,” the NGOs said in a joint statement. "The population faces starvation, looming famine and an outbreak of disease under the Zionist entity’s continued indiscriminate bombardment and deliberate deprivation of aid in Gaza.”

A total of 152 UNRWA staff had already been killed in Zionist strikes and 145 of the UN agency’s facilities had been damaged by bombardment, according to the statement, issued in English by the Norwegian Refugee Council, on behalf of the aid groups. "If the funding suspensions are not reversed, we may see a complete collapse of the already restricted humanitarian response in Gaza,” they said.

Duty to Palestinians

The NGOs said more than a million displaced Palestinians were taking shelter in or around 154 UNRWA shelters, stressing that the agency has been working in "near impossible circumstances.” "Countries must reverse these funding suspensions, uphold their duties towards the Palestinian people and scale up humanitarian assistance for civilians in dire need in Gaza and the region.”

The World Health Organization warned the funding row was distracting from the humanitarian disaster in the Palestinian territory. Raafat al-Murra, a Hamas official in Lebanon, said the UNRWA funding crisis had "dangerous repercussions for Palestinian refugees, particularly in Lebanon, where they depend mainly on UNRWA in the absence of aid from the Lebanese state”. "We have called on the United Nations to take urgent measures ... and look for more financing,” he said. Around 5.9 million Palestinians are registered with UNRWA and can access health care, social services, microfinance and emergency aid. — AFP