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MIDDLE EAST CRISIS

Spain goes against the tide with extra funding for UNRWA as donors suspend aid

Spain said Monday that it would give an additional €3.5 million ($3.8 million) in aid to the UN Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA, which is facing a cash crunch after several nations suspended their funding.

Spain goes against the tide with extra funding for UNRWA as donors suspend aid
Palestinian men and children gather for a demonstration in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on January 30, 2024, calling for continued international support to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas. (Photo by AFP)

Over a dozen countries, including major donors the United States, Germany, Britain and Sweden, have suspended their funding to the agency over accusations that 12 of its staff members were involved in the October 7th attacks in Israel by Hamas.

The UNRWA – which has received a Norwegian nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize – has warned that it will have to cease operations by the end of February if the funding is significantly pulled.

“Spain will release an urgent envelope of €3.5 million so that UNRWA can maintain its activities in the short term,” Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares told a parliamentary committee.

“UNRWA’s situation is desperate and there is a serious risk that its humanitarian activities will be paralysed in Gaza within a few weeks,” he said.

European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said Sunday that suspended total funds currently amount to “more than $440 million, or around half the agency’s expected funds for 2024”.

In response to the October 7th attack, which resulted in the deaths of about 1,160 people, mainly civilians, Israel vowed to wipe out Hamas.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said last week that the UN agency had been “totally infiltrated” by Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007.

Israel has responded to the attack with an air and ground offensive that has killed 27,365 people, mainly civilians, according to a Hamas health ministry toll updated Sunday.

Spain is one of the most critical voices in Europe of Israel’s offensive against Hamas.

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POLITICS

First pardons granted under Spain’s amnesty for Catalan separatists

A politician and police officer on Tuesday became the first people to benefit from Spain's divisive amnesty law for Catalan separatists involved in a botched 2017 secession bid.

First pardons granted under Spain's amnesty for Catalan separatists

The amnesty law – approved last month – is expected to affect around 400 people facing trial or already convicted over their roles in the wealthy northeastern region’s failed independence push, which triggered Spain’s worst political crisis in decades.

Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez agreed to grant the amnesty in exchange for the key support of Catalan separatist parties in parliament to secure a new term in office following an inconclusive general election last July.

READ ALSO: Spain’s contested Catalan amnesty bill comes into force

The separatist parties have threatened to withdraw their support for Sánchez’s minority government unless the amnesty is applied.

Catalonia’s High Court said it had decided to “declare the extinction of criminal responsibility” for former Catalan regional interior minister Miquel Buch, as well as to Lluís Escolà, an officer in Catalonia’s regional police force, since the crimes they were convicted of “have been amnestied”.

Buch was sentenced last year to four and a half years in jail for embezzlement and misappropriation for hiring Escolà in 2018 and paying him out of public coffers to act as a bodyguard for the former head of the regional Catalan government, Carles Puigdemont, while he was in self-imposed exile in Belgium.

Escolà was handed a four-year prison sentence for working as Puigdemont’s bodyguard.

Puigdemont fled Spain to avoid arrest shortly after his government led Catalonia’s failed secession push, which involved an independence referendum that was banned by the courts followed by a short-lived declaration of independence.

Spain’s conservative opposition has staged massive street protests against the amnesty law, which judges must decide to apply on a case-by-case basis.

Puigdemont had said he hopes to return to Spain but there is still a warrant for his arrest and a Spanish court continues to investigate him for the alleged crimes of embezzlement and disobedience related to the secession bid.

He also remains under investigation for alleged terrorism over protests in 2019 against the jailing of several referendum leaders that sometimes turned violent.

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