Officials Warn of Devastating Consequences If UNRWA Funding Is Not Restored

Members of the Zourub family, displaced from the central Gaza Strip, keep warm by a fire outside their tent, near the border separating the Gaza Strip and Egypt, in the city of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip 27 February 2024. (EPA)
Members of the Zourub family, displaced from the central Gaza Strip, keep warm by a fire outside their tent, near the border separating the Gaza Strip and Egypt, in the city of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip 27 February 2024. (EPA)
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Officials Warn of Devastating Consequences If UNRWA Funding Is Not Restored

Members of the Zourub family, displaced from the central Gaza Strip, keep warm by a fire outside their tent, near the border separating the Gaza Strip and Egypt, in the city of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip 27 February 2024. (EPA)
Members of the Zourub family, displaced from the central Gaza Strip, keep warm by a fire outside their tent, near the border separating the Gaza Strip and Egypt, in the city of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip 27 February 2024. (EPA)

If funding for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees is not restored soon, it will have devastating consequences for Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, officials warned on Wednesday.

“The decision to stop funding UNRWA constitutes a collective punishment for every Palestinian inside Palestine and in the diaspora countries, especially in Lebanon,” Lebanese Member of Parliament Fadi Alame told reporters Wednesday after touring the Ein el-Hilweh refugee camp near the southern port city of Sidon with an UNRWA delegation.

Some 250,000 Palestinian refugees in Lebanon depend on UNRWA for services including healthcare, schooling and cash assistance for the poorest families.

Last month, Israel alleged that 12 UNRWA employees took part in the Oct. 7 attack, prompting the United States and other donors to suspend funding. UNRWA immediately fired the 10 surviving employees and has launched investigations. The agency says if funding is not restored, it will have to halt operations in April.

Dorothee Klaus, UNRWA’s director in Lebanon, said that a halt to the agency’s services would have “security and stability” as well as “humanitarian” consequences.



Olmert: ‘Humanitarian City’ in Rafah Would Be Concentration Camp for Palestinians

Former Israel's prime minister Ehud Olmert looks on during an interview with AFP (Agence France-Presse) in Paris on June 9, 2025. (Photo by STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN / AFP)
Former Israel's prime minister Ehud Olmert looks on during an interview with AFP (Agence France-Presse) in Paris on June 9, 2025. (Photo by STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN / AFP)
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Olmert: ‘Humanitarian City’ in Rafah Would Be Concentration Camp for Palestinians

Former Israel's prime minister Ehud Olmert looks on during an interview with AFP (Agence France-Presse) in Paris on June 9, 2025. (Photo by STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN / AFP)
Former Israel's prime minister Ehud Olmert looks on during an interview with AFP (Agence France-Presse) in Paris on June 9, 2025. (Photo by STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN / AFP)

Israel’s former prime minister Ehud Olmert said that the “humanitarian city” that Israel’s defense minister has proposed building on the ruins of Rafah would be a concentration camp, and forcing Palestinians inside would be ethnic cleansing, the Guardian reported on Sunday.

Israel was already committing war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank, Olmert told the daily, and construction of the camp would mark an escalation.

Israeli Minister of Defense, Israel Katz, has ordered the military to start drawing up operational plans for construction of the “humanitarian city” on the ruins of southern Gaza, to house initially 600,000 people and eventually the entire Palestinian population, stated the Guardian.

“It is a concentration camp. I am sorry,” Olmert told he daily, when asked about the plans laid out by Katz last week. Once inside, Palestinians would not be allowed to leave, except to go to other countries, Katz said.

The “humanitarian city” project is backed by Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Israel’s refusal to withdraw from the area Katz envisages for the camp is a sticking point in the faltering negotiations for a ceasefire deal, Israeli media have reported.