Sweden Resumes Payments to UNRWA

Displaced Palestinians at Rafah refugee camp, near the border with Egypt, southern Gaza Strip, 29 February 2024. (EPA)
Displaced Palestinians at Rafah refugee camp, near the border with Egypt, southern Gaza Strip, 29 February 2024. (EPA)
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Sweden Resumes Payments to UNRWA

Displaced Palestinians at Rafah refugee camp, near the border with Egypt, southern Gaza Strip, 29 February 2024. (EPA)
Displaced Palestinians at Rafah refugee camp, near the border with Egypt, southern Gaza Strip, 29 February 2024. (EPA)

Sweden said on Saturday it would resume suspended payments to the UN refugee agency for Palestinians (UNRWA), with a grant of 200 million crowns ($20 million).

Several countries, including the United States and Britain, paused their funding to UNRWA after accusations by Israel that a dozen of the agency's 13,000 staff in Gaza took part in the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel.

The Swedish government said it had resumed payments after UNRWA agreed to strengthen internal controls and to extra checks on its employees, among other measures.



Trump’s Middle East Envoy Says Progress Being Made on Israeli Hostages in Gaza

Smoke billows as buildings lie in ruin in the Gaza Strip, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, as seen from southern Israel, January 7, 2025. (Reuters)
Smoke billows as buildings lie in ruin in the Gaza Strip, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, as seen from southern Israel, January 7, 2025. (Reuters)
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Trump’s Middle East Envoy Says Progress Being Made on Israeli Hostages in Gaza

Smoke billows as buildings lie in ruin in the Gaza Strip, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, as seen from southern Israel, January 7, 2025. (Reuters)
Smoke billows as buildings lie in ruin in the Gaza Strip, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, as seen from southern Israel, January 7, 2025. (Reuters)

President-elect Donald Trump's Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff said on Tuesday he hopes to have good things to report about Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza by the time Trump is sworn in as president on Jan. 20.

Witkoff, at a press conference held by Trump in Palm Beach, Florida, said: "I'm really hopeful that by the inaugural we'll have some good things to announce on behalf of the President."

Republican Trump said of the Israeli hostages kidnapped by Hamas in the Oct. 7 2024 attack on Israel: "If the hostages are not back by the time I'm in office, all hell will break out in the Middle East, and it will not be good for Hamas, and it will not be good, frankly, for anyone."