The U.N. agency that supports Palestinian refugees said schools and health centers are at risk of closing if it remains unable to plug a $185 million funding gap needed to keep operating until the end of the year, the agency's head said on Monday.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency has "money in the bank" that is expected to last only until mid-October, UNRWA Director Pierre Kraehenbuehl told reporters in New York, where world leaders are attending the annual U.N. General Assembly.
"But it's clear that we still need approximately $185 million to be able to ensure that all of our services, education system, health care, relief and social services and our emergency work in Syria and Gaza in particular can continue until the end of the year," he said.
The United States, UNRWA's biggest donor, last month announced a halt in its aid to the agency, calling it an "irredeemably flawed operation," a decision that further heightened tensions between the Palestinian leadership and the Trump administration.
UNRWA claims it provides services to about 5 million Palestinian refugees across Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
The ever-growing refugee count was cited by Washington in its decision to withhold funding.
The U.S. claims UNRWA's figures are grossly inflated, saying that according to its own data, there are only about 20,000 Palestinian refugees.
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley has been critical of the U.N.'s count of Palestinian refugees.
She has also questioned the "right of return" to Israel, claimed by the Palestinians as part of any eventual peace settlement.
"When you don't tackle the underlying causes of conflict, that's when you get 70 years of UNRWA," Kraehenbuehl said Monday. "It's not UNRWA that perpetuates itself, it's because the refugee community is still there waiting for a political solution to address its situation."
He compared the Palestinian "right of return" issue with that of the Rohingya Muslim refugees from Myanmar who have fled into Bangladesh and that of Bosnian Muslim refugees who fled to areas under Serbian control in the 1990s.
"So the only question one should ask is why should Palestine refugees be the one community where this question is not a justified question," he said.
UNRWA's Gaza employees suspended services for a day on Monday to protest pay cuts and dismissals.
Schools, clinics, and food distributions were halted as UNRWA's 13,000 Palestinian employees in Gaza went on a one-day strike.
They threatened "harsher" protests if the agency does not rescind cuts by Thursday.
The deficit in UNRWA's coffers has caused 113 emergency program jobs to be scrapped and 584 staff positions to be converted from full- to part-time.
