Lawsuit against Unrwa USA seeks to ‘drain’ resources from Palestinians
As the humanitarian situation inside Gaza deteriorates, a US-based non-profit organisation faces a legal battle that could lose its ability to be a significant source of donations to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).
A coalition of pro-Israel groups in the United States and families of prisoners detained in Gaza have filed a lawsuit against UNRWA in the United States over accusations that the nonprofit “aids and abets terrorism” and provides money to Hamas through its financial support for UNRWA. They claim that the US agency UNRWA helped finance the October 7 attacks against Israel.
Lawyers representing UNRWA in the United States filed a motion last week urging the court to dismiss the case because the lawsuit provides no evidence to support its claims.
This case concerns UNRWA in the United States, and the complaint does not allege that a single cent of UNRWA contributions in the United States was allocated to any Hamas-related activities, let alone aiding and abetting the October 7 attacks,” the motion reads.
UNRWA’s US legal team stated that although they believe the lawsuit lacks merit, it serves as a distraction from the ongoing crisis in Gaza and will drain the charity’s resources.
The goal of these accusations is to distract attention, and the goal of these lawsuits, in my view, is to drain the groups’ resources,” said Diala Shamas, a senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, one of the organisations. He works in defence of UNRWA in the United States of America.
While organisations like UNRWA in the US do vital work trying to direct maximum humanitarian support to Palestinians in Gaza at the time they need it most, they are distracted by having to defend against these lawsuits,” said Shammas.
The battle to stop funding UNRWA:
UNRWA is a United Nations agency created in 1949 to serve the needs of Palestinian refugees within the occupied Palestinian territories as well as Palestinian refugee communities in other countries such as Lebanon, Jordan and Syria.
During the past few months amid the Israeli war on Gaza, UNRWA has played a vital role in facilitating the delivery of humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza. However, since October, when the Gaza war broke out, Israel has been working to dismantle UNRWA, its operations inside the Strip and its ability to raise funds.
The lawsuit filed by families of Israeli hostages targets UNRWA USA. This independent, US-based non-profit organisation works to “educate the American public about the plight of Palestine refugees and generate financial support for specific UNRWA programs,” according to its website.
The agency said in a recent statement that UNRWA USA is also a separate entity from both UNRWA and the US government. This lawsuit is kind of a tiny sliver of a much larger story. And that larger story is the use and abuse of US terrorism laws to suppress solidarity with Palestinians.
