Israel squeezing UN Palestinian refugee agency ahead of polls: Chief

UNRWA’s acting Commissioner-General Christian Saunders said Israel was being “extremely difficult” about letting in vital supplies like engine oil to Gaza for relief operations.

NEW YORK - Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing Israeli government is squeezing the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees ahead of elections in Israel in an effort to boost its appeal to voters, the agency’s leader said.

UNRWA’s acting Commissioner-General Christian Saunders said Israel was being “extremely difficult” about letting in vital supplies like engine oil to Gaza for relief operations while permitting luxury commercial products.

“About 30 per cent of what’s coming in is humanitarian aid – the rest is commercial... I would consider some of the stuff coming in to be luxury goods. I mean, you do not need Nutella to survive,” he told AFP late on Sept 22.

Speaking at the UN’s signature New York diplomatic gathering, Saunders also warned he would be forced to cut long-term services to refugees if his agency could not begin to bridge a US$100 million (S$127.93 million) shortfall in the next two months.

“We implemented a number of austerity measures, including putting the staff on an 80 per cent work week with a 20 per cent reduction in salary... although you cannot keep people on an 80 per cent work week and a 20 per cent reduction in salary forever,” he said.

Saunders said he believes Israel’s Oct 27 elections are contributing to UNRWA’s challenges because “the current government is pushing to implement as much of their program before the elections as they can.”

Prime Minister Netanyahu, who heads the most right-wing government in Israeli history, is locked in a tight election race and is focussing his campaign on security concerns ahead of October’s vote.

UNRWA has long attracted Netanyahu’s ire.

“I think they’re trying to show the Israeli public why they should re-elect them,” Saunders added.

In September, Israeli forces took control of a vocational training centre run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees in an east Jerusalem suburb.

The raid drew condemnation from UN chief Antonio Guterres, and followed warnings by UNRWA that Israeli authorities were threatening its Qalandia training centre, located between the east Jerusalem neighbourhood of Kafr Aqab and the Qalandia refugee camp.

The centre was established in 1952 and offers vocational training to around 340 Palestinians from the occupied West Bank every year, according to UNRWA.

“We’ve been doing this for 76 years. We will find alternative ways in which to provide those young people with the necessary training,” Saunders said.

In January, Israel began demolitions at UNRWA’s headquarters in east Jerusalem, in what the organisation called an “unprecedented attack.”

Netanyahu’s government has repeatedly accused UNRWA of providing cover for Hamas militants, claiming that some of its employees took part in the group’s Oct 7, 2023, attack on Israel that sparked the war in Gaza.

Legislation severing ties with the agency and banning it from operating on Israeli territory took effect in January 2025.

A series of investigations, including one led by France’s former foreign minister Catherine Colonna, found some “neutrality-related issues” at UNRWA but stressed Israel had not provided conclusive evidence for its headline allegation. AFP