The European Commission announced on March 1 that it would "unfreeze" funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, with the first batch of 50 million euros.
The European Commission was supposed to disburse grants totalling €82 million to UNRWA by the end of February this year. The committee said in a statement on the 1st that the EU side will subsequently allocate two more tranches of 16 million euros each in accordance with the agreement reached with UNRWA.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on the 1st that "innocent Palestinians" should not "pay" for the actions of the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas).
UNRWA was established in 1949 to provide humanitarian, educational and medical services to registered Palestinian refugees living in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. In January this year, Israel designated 12 UNRWA staff members as involved in a large-scale Hamas raid on military and civilian targets in Israel on 7 October last year. More than a dozen countries, including the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, subsequently announced that they would stop funding the agency.
At one point, the European Commission also announced a suspension of funding and called for an audit of UNRWA. The European Commission said on the 1st that it decided to release the first batch of grants early next week after UNRWA agreed to "a series of conditions" such as being audited.
In addition, the EU intends to provide an additional 68 million euros to the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and other institutions to assist the Palestinian population. (END) (Zheng Haoning).