By Emilie Madi
BEIRUT (Reuters) – The director of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees in Lebanon said on Wednesday that the agency had not been affected by U.S. President Donald Trump’s halt to U.S. foreign aid funding or by an Israeli ban on its operations.
“UNRWA currently is not receiving any U.S. funding so there is no direct impact of the more recent decisions related to the U.N. system for UNRWA,” Dorothee Klaus told reporters at UNRWA’s field office in Lebanon.
U.S. funding to UNRWA was suspended last year until March 2025 under a deal reached by U.S. lawmakers and after Israel accused 12 of the agency’s 13,000 employees in Gaza of participating in the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack that triggered the Gaza war.
The U.N. has said it had fired nine UNRWA staff who may have been involved and said it would investigate all accusations made.
Klaus said that UNRWA Lebanon had also placed four staff members on administrative leave as it investigated allegations they had breached the U.N. principle of neutrality.
One UNRWA teacher had already been suspended last year and a Hamas commander in Lebanon – killed in September in an Israeli strike – was found to have had an UNRWA job.
Klaus also said there was “no direct impact” on the agency’s Lebanon operations from a new Israeli law banning UNRWA operations in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and that “UNRWA will continue fully operating in Lebanon.”
The law, adopted in October, bans UNRWA’s operation on Israeli land – including East Jerusalem, which Israel annexed in a move not recognized internationally – and contact with Israeli authorities from Jan. 30.
UNRWA provides aid, health and education services to millions in the Palestinian territories and neighboring Arab countries of Syria, Lebanon and Jordan.
Its commissioner general Philippe Lazzarini said on Tuesday that UNRWA has been the target of a “fierce disinformation campaign” to “portray the agency as a terrorist organization.”
(Reporting by Emilie Madi; Writing by Maya Gebeily; Editing by Angus MacSwan)
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