Israel has asked the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees to expand its humanitarian program in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, setting aside criticism of the organization it accused of siding with ‘militants’.
Israel's request to UNRWA could see the agency assisting Palestinians who are not refugees, Israeli officials and UN diplomats said.
‘In the past, we have had serious concerns about patterns of behavior within UNRWA,’ Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said in reference to past Israeli charges that UNRWA employed Hamas members and provided assistance to militants.
Israel looked into the possibility of phasing out the agency's operations in Gaza as recently as last year when Israel pulled out of the Strip, sources close to the government said.
Relations have since improved, Regev said.
‘Because we won't be working with a Hamas-controlled government, we are looking at different alternatives and one of them that's being discussed is UNRWA, which has an infrastructure in place to deliver aid,’ Regev said.
Unlike their American counterparts, UN diplomats are not legally barred from dealing with Hamas.
Officials said the United States and the EU could also use to UNRWA and other UN agencies as a legal means to funnel humanitarian assistance to the Palestinians without going through Hamas-run ministries.
UNRWA's commissioner-general, Karen Koning AbuZayd, said her agency was in the process of ‘contingency planning’ for a possible expansion of UNRWA's assistance programs for Palestinians, particularly for refugees who do not currently receive assistance in the West Bank.
‘It can be done,’ she told Reuters in an interview. ‘But we'd be very concerned about our capacity.’
Other UN officials also sought to play down the ability of UNRWA and other UN agencies to take over functions now provided by the Palestinian Authority.
‘We can do food aid. We can do job creation. But taking over a health ministry is not something that we're equipped to do,’ David Shearer, head of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, told Reuters.