Sami Mushasha, the official spokesman of UNRWA, the UN agency for “Palestinian refugees”, says there are positive signs that the organization's mandate will be renewed for another three years.
In an interview with the Hamas-affiliated Felesteen newspaper, Mushasha said that the donor countries expressed their willingness to contribute to UNRWA's annual budget, which is facing a $120 million deficit.
The decision to extend the UNRWA mandate will be made by the UN General Assembly in mid-November. In 2016, 167 countries voted in favor of the resolution to extend the organization's mandate.
Mushasha said in the interview that UNRWA's annual budget is $1.2 billion, and the organization intends to introduce an identical budget next year.
Created in 1949, UNRWA supplies aid to more than three million of the five million registered “Palestinian refugees” in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and territories assigned to the Palestinian Authority.
However, it is also notorious for its anti-Israel activities. During the 2014 counterterrorism Operation Protective Edge, Hamas rockets were discovered inside a school building run by UNRWA.
Likewise, a booby-trapped UNRWA clinic was detonated, killing three IDF soldiers. Aside from the massive amounts of explosives hidden in the walls of the clinic, it was revealed that it stood on top of dozens of terror tunnels, showing how UNRWA is closely embedded with Hamas.
In a more recent incident, the director of UNRWA operations in Gaza expressed his support for the anti-Israel marches along the Israel-Gaza border and pledged that the organization’s medical centers will provide care for “Palestinian refugees” who might sustain injuries during them.
The US, which was previously UNRWA's largest contributor, last year cut a full $300 million in funding to the agency.
The agency ran into more trouble recently, after a UN ethics report alleged mismanagement and abuses of authority at the highest levels of UNRWA, including involving UNRWA's top official, Commissioner-General Pierre Krahenbuhl.
In the wake of the report, Switzerland said it was suspending funding to UNRWA. The Netherlands followed Switzerland and suspended its contribution to the organization as well.