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Norway calls on donors to resume aid to UN agency for Palestinians

Norway, which heads the group of donors for Palestine (AHLC), on Tuesday urged donors to resume their aid to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA.

Published: 24 April 2024 10:15 CEST

Pictured is a file photo of Espen Barth Eide

Norway has called on other countries to unfreeze donations to the UNWRA. Norway's Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide (R) (Photo by Genya Savilov / AFP).

The call came the day after an independent review group said that while it had found some “neutrality-related issues” in its much-anticipated report on the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, it noted that “Israel has yet to provide supporting evidence” for its claim that UNRWA employs more than 400 “terrorists.”

“I am very pleased that countries like Australia, Canada, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Japan and Sweden have already reversed their decisions and resumed funding to UNRWA,” Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide said in a statement.

“I would now like to call on countries that have still frozen their contributions to UNRWA to resume funding,” he said.

Norway is one of the few major donors that maintained its funding to UNRWA despite allegations by Israel in January that some UNRWA staff may have participated in the October 7th, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel which resulted in the deaths of about 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

In the weeks that followed the allegations, numerous donor states suspended or paused some $450 million in funding.

According to the Hamas health ministry, more than 34,000 people have been killed since the beginning of Israel’s retaliatory offensive in Gaza, whose population is now at risk of famine.

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Norway to quadruple aid to Palestinians amidst famine fears

Figures in the revised budget presented on Tuesday, show a roughly quadrupling of the 258 million kroner provided in the initial finance bill adopted last year.

“The urgent need of aid in Gaza is enormous after seven months of war,” Norway’s Minister of International Development, Anne Beathe Tvinnereim, said in a statement.

“The food situation in particular is critical and there is a risk of famine,” she added, criticising “an entirely man-made crisis” and an equally “critical” situation in the West Bank.

According to the draft budget, Norway intends to dedicate 0.98 percent of its gross national income to development aid this year.

The figures are still subject to change because the centre-left government, a minority in parliament, has to negotiate with other parties to get the texts adopted.

For his part, Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide again warned Israel against a large-scale military operation in Rafah, a city on the southern edge of the besieged Gaza Strip.

“It would be catastrophic for the population. Providing life-saving humanitarian support would become much more difficult and more dangerous,” Barth Eide said.

He added: “The more than 1 million who have sought refuge in Rafah have already fled multiple times from famine, death and horror. They are now being told to move again, but no place in Gaza is safe.”

As part of the response to the unprecedented Hamas attack on Israeli soil on October 7th, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he is determined to launch an operation in Rafah, which he considers to be the last major stronghold of the militant organisation.

Many in Rafah have been displaced multiple times during the war, and are now heading back north after Israeli forces called for the evacuation of the city’s eastern part.

On May 7th, Israeli tanks and troops entered the city’s east sending desperate Palestinians to flee north.

According to the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), “almost 450,000” people have been displaced from Rafah since May 6th.

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