The lower chamber of the Swiss legislature voted on Tuesday morning to cut funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) as concerns have mounted over the group’s conduct in the Gaza Strip.
“Disheartened by Switzerland Parliament’s national council move to cut aid to @UNRWA, as the Agency is recognized as a major humanitarian actor in #Gaza & the region,” the commissioner-general of the group Philippe Lazzarini wrote on X following the news. “Hope the Senate will revise this decision as @UNRWA is the first responder in Gaza and a lifeline for millions.”
“As a country that leads on International Humanitarian Law, I am disappointed in this decision to cut aid to the largest and most active Humanitarian Agency on the ground in #Gaza today. Cutting funds jeopardizes services during an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe.”
UNRWA’s official account also bemoaned the move, calling it a “disappointment as our teams on [the] ground continue to do the impossible to help more than 1.3 million people in our shelters.”
Since the conflict between Israel and Hamas began in early October, UNRWA has come under fire for employing people who celebrated the 10/7 atrocities and deleting social-media posts that accused Palestinian terror groups of hoarding humanitarian aid.
In mid October, the U.N. body deleted a post on X that accused Hamas of stealing humanitarian supplies. “@UNRWA received reports that yesterday a group of people with trucks purporting to be from the Ministry of Health of the de facto authorities in #Gaza, removed fuel and medical equipment from the Agency’s compound in #GazaCity,” the agency wrote without explicitly naming Hamas. “@UNRWA fuel & other types of material are kept for strictly humanitarian purposes – any other use is strongly condemned.”
However, hours after publishing the note, UNWRA quietly deleted the message. Sources familiar with the situation confirmed to Haaretz, a left-leaning Israeli publication, that the story is accurate.
Israeli officials were quick to flag that one of Gaza’s most influential humanitarian groups had sought to cover up Hamas’s pilfering aid intended for Gazan civilians. “Hamas stole fuel and medical equipment from UNRWA in Gaza. The amount of fuel stolen is enough to power Gaza’s water desalination facilities for six days,” IDF wrote following the revelation. A similar note was released by Israel’s Foreign Ministry: “Wait @UNRWA – Did Hamas also break into your Twitter account? Or are you just scared of disappointing your terrorist friends?”
Following the embarrassing admission, UNRWA issued an “URGENT CLARIFICATION” on X, seeking to contextualize the now-deleted post. “With regards to reports on social media of looting of an UNRWA warehouse. UNRWA would like to confirm that no looting has taken place in any of its warehouses in the Gaza Strip,” the group wrote later Monday. “The images circulating on social media were of a movement of basic medical supplies from the UNRWA warehouse to health partners.”
In early November, a research report by UN Watch found that nearly two dozen UNRWA staffers had celebrated Hamas’s slaughter of Israeli civilians. “Allah is Great, Allah is Great, reality surpasses our wildest dreams,” wrote Osama Ahmed, a UNRWA teacher in Gaza, in a characteristic Facebook post captured by the watchdog organization in its report “UNRWA: Hate Starts Here.”
The publication also documents numerous senior-ranking members of the organization gloating about the October 7 atrocities, including Rawia Helles, the director of a training center in Khan Younis, a town in the southern Gaza Strip. Helles applauded the depraved acts of Palestinian terrorists, calling one operative a “hero” and “prince” for his actions. She was also featured in a UNRWA appeal on YouTube in October, raising awareness about the organization’s work.
Mohammad Adwan, an English teacher within a UNRWA-funded institution in Rafah, justified the Hamas attack against “a people [Jews] that Europe wanted to get rid of.”
“We have owned this land for thousands of years. Our ancestors were the ones who planted its olive trees for hundreds of years until a people came that Europe wanted to get rid of, so they sent them to occupy our homes and displace our ancestors with massacres,” Adwan wrote four days after the Hamas invasion. “What we do is resistance, regaining our rights and defending our land, and what they do is called occupation and colonialism (I think the West understands this word well).” Rafiq Kuheil, another English teacher affiliated with UNRWA, wrote, “7th, October, 2023! Sculpture the date! ❤️” on Facebook.
The revelations eventually led Germany and the European Union to pause funding to UNRWA until “procedures and tools used to enforce the contractual obligations” were implemented to ensure “anti-incitement clauses.”
In early December, the group also pressured an Israeli journalist to retract reports that a hostage was held captive at an UNRWA facility in the Gaza Strip prior to their release.
The final vote is expected to be held in the upper chamber of the Swiss parliament, the National Council, next week.