Tents for displaced Palestinians spread in Rafah, south of the Gaza Strip (Al Jazeera)

Israeli officers in the occupation army made a recommendation to the Chief of Staff to stop the smear campaign against the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), while Australia said it was studying the accusations leveled by Israel against the agency, which recently warned that the people of Gaza were “dying before the eyes of the world.”

Israeli Channel 12 said that senior army officers submitted a recommendation to Chief of Staff Herzi Halevy to stop the widespread smear campaign against UNRWA, at least for the time being.

He advised the officers not to expand the scope of distorting the agency at these times, especially before the planned discussion in the US Congress, as well as the political level in Israel, to decide the mechanisms for dealing with UNRWA and finding alternatives to it.

They pointed out that the leaks about the agency that prompted countries to stop funding it were not organized Israeli leaks. According to the channel, the officers fear that the process of discrediting UNRWA before finding an alternative will have very negative results in the Gaza Strip.

Israel had accused 12 of the agency's employees of participating in the attacks of the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) on Israel on October 7, 2023, on settlements around the Gaza Strip, which prompted 18 countries and the European Union to suspend funding for the agency.

Study the accusations

In a related development, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said - today, Sunday - that his government is investigating allegations that some UNRWA employees were involved in the October 7 attacks, after Australia stopped its funding for the agency last month.

According to a transcript, Albanese told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation regarding the accusations, "We are looking into the matter along with other like-minded countries such as Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States. We want to resolve this."

Albanese said that his government wants to ensure that the accusations are “fully examined” so that all funding goes “for the purpose for which it was provided,” stressing that he does not want “people to die of hunger” in Gaza and that “the only organization that can provide this support there is UNRWA.” .

Late last month, Britain, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Finland joined the United States, Australia, and Canada in stopping funding for the relief agency, while the agency said it had opened an investigation into a number of employees and cut its ties with these people.

Death before the eyes of the world

For its part, UNRWA warned yesterday, in a tweet on its account on the X platform, that the residents of Gaza are “dying before the eyes of the world” in a unique disaster of its kind.

The agency pointed to the hunger crisis and the humanitarian tragedy that is worsening day after day in the Gaza Strip, in light of the Israeli attacks and siege, and said, “An unprecedented catastrophe is happening before our eyes in Gaza,” stressing that “people are dying before the eyes of the world.”

The agency, whose largest donors in 2022 were the United States, Germany, and the European Union, has repeatedly confirmed that its ability to provide humanitarian assistance to the residents of Gaza is on the verge of collapse.

Earlier, UN Secretary-General António Guterres in January described UNRWA as “the backbone of all humanitarian relief operations in Gaza” and called on all countries to “ensure the continuity of UNRWA’s life-saving work.”

Source: Agencies