US urges donors to fund Board of Peace instead of UNRWA as pressures mount on refugee agency

Washington called last week on United Nations member states to stop funding the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA). Speaking at the UNRWA annual pledging conference where donor states gathered to raise funds for the agency, United States Ambassador to the UN Jeff Bartos appealed to donor states saying, “You can choose to fund the Board of Peace” instead. The Board of Peace, which was simultaneously gathering for a “reset” in Cyprus, later reposted Bartos’s speech, saying “UNRWA has no place in the new Gaza. We are turning the page on the complex of perpetual aid dependency & conflict.” The US bid to siphon funding from the international community away from UNRWA comes as the Board of Peace struggles to generate funding commitments to make good on its mandate to translate Gaza’s truce into a lasting peace. But the pressure adds to the knot of existing challenges facing the agency, which provides services in Gaza alone to around 1.4 million Palestinians registered as refugees after recent or historical Israeli aggression. In recent years, UNRWA has grappled with political pressure from Israel and an increasingly hostile US administration which have sought to tar its staff with the brush of terror allegations, as well as with an unprecedented funding shortfall which has reduced its capacity to deliver services to Palestinian refugees in all of the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Lebanon and Jordan amid and in the aftermath of the genocidal war that began in 2023. *** Speaking at the annual pledging conference in New York, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres made a plea for donor states to bolster UNRWA, pitching its role as crucial in supporting Palestinian refugees. UNRWA’s “situation is increasingly precarious,” said the UN chief, describing the agency as facing “sweeping restrictions throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory and a cash shortfall that imperils its work across the region.” He reiterated that no other organization “can replace or substitute the agency’s capacity and mandate.” In his counter-plea, Bartos pitched the agency as rife with “incitement, terrorism, and stagnation,” and claimed that the Board of Peace, which has stalled over recent months in fulfilling its commitment to translate Gaza’s truce into a lasting peace , would be a stronger alternative to “give the Palestinian people living in Gaza the opportunity to find durable solutions and prosper.” The bid to frame UNRWA’s role as mere humanitarian service-provision seeks to undermine the idea and status of Palestinian refugeehood, Palestinian political researcher Fathy Nimr and political analyst Ayman al-Raqab told Mada Masr. UNRWA was established in 1949 with a mandate to “provide assistance and protection to Palestine refugees pending a just and lasting solution to their plight.” Amir al-Meshal, the former head of UNRWA’s Gaza Staff Union, also stressed the UN agency’s mandate to support Palestinians expelled from their historic lands, saying decision-makers recognize the agency as the foremost historical and legal witness to the plight of Palestinian refugees that began with the Nakba. Eliminating the agency, Raqab said, would effectively erase the refugee file itself, paving the way for Palestinian refugees to be denied the right of return in any future political settlement. Raqab noted that the efforts to cast UNRWA as another services agency while ignoring its mandate to serve refugees is paired with proposals to replace it with alternative providers. Current proposals envision the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG) — a technocratic government formed in January and set to take on a management role in Gaza under US President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace plan — as ultimately assuming responsibility for the strip’s administrative affairs, including public services, education and healthcare, thereby rendering UNRWA unnecessary, Raqab added. But the national committee is yet to set foot in Gaza, with Israel blocking its entry and insisting that Hamas’s disarmament be accomplished first. In his pitch for donor states to support the Board of Peace, which would hold executive power over the NCAG, Bartos also distanced the prospect of the US-led board preserving the status of Palestinian refugees, describing the board as an alternative to “forever refugeehood.” *** UNRWA has already faced diminishing funding pledges over recent years that have left the agency’s capacity seriously compromised. Over a dozen countries stopped funding the agency in 2024 after Israel accused 12 of its employees of participating in Hamas’s Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7, 2023. While some countries have renewed funding due to a lack of evidence to support the claim, the US suspended all of its foreign aid financing at the beginning of Trump’s second term in office. And beginning in March 2025, staff members were placed on a compulsory one-year leave before the agency proceeded with arbitrary dismissals, citing the financial crisis. Around 600 employees who fled Gaza due to the war, most of whom worked in the education sector, were dismissed. While international staff were instructed to leave Gaza for their safety, Palestinian teachers who left the strip but continued to teach remotely faced layoffs, according to a former UNRWA employee who was dismissed in the 2025 layoffs. Whilst attending an UNRWA-organized psychological support session to help staff cope with the psychological impact of living through the war, some teachers received emails informing them they were being placed on “exceptional leave for one year,” the former UNRWA employee told Mada Masr. Two months before the leave period expired, the teachers received another email informing them that they have been permanently dismissed, without prior notice. The dismissals have left many teachers struggling to afford rent while in displacement and facing stress-related health complications, the former employee said. UNRWA employees within Gaza have not been spared. About a month ago, around 70 employees still inside the strip also lost their jobs. One of them told Mada Masr that their dismissal came without warning. They described the layoffs as driven by “purely political” motives, explaining that the termination notice stated that their employment had been ended due to “suspicions from Israeli allegations claiming their involvement in military activities.” The employee described the measure as illegal and said the decision relied on unsubstantiated suspicions rather than conclusive evidence. Another dismissed employee confirmed the lack of transparency, saying they received a similar notice about a month ago that provided no explanation and did not observe the standard legal notice period before dismissal. They said they remain in a state of deep anxiety while awaiting a response from UNRWA’s Gaza administration to their appeal against the decision. Meshal, the former Gaza Staff Union head, said the severity of the decisions reflects UNRWA’s submission to intense political pressure from donor states. Alongside the staff layoffs, the added steps to reduce services and transfer vital UNRWA functions to other UN and international organizations could represent a gradual phasing-out of the agency, Meshal said. Azmy Radwan, a member of UNRWA’s Arab Employees Union, said that while UNRWA remains a lifeline for a large segment of Gaza’s refugee population, its operations have been severely curtailed during Israel’s genocidal war on the strip. The agency is currently able to provide only around 30 percent of the services it delivered before the war, said Radwan. A recent UNRWA report noted that “126 UNRWA installations are currently located in areas where access has been restricted” by Israel’s ongoing occupation of large areas of the Gaza Strip. *** Both political analysts expressed concern that the political horizons for preserving UNRWA are limited. Palestinians have only limited diplomatic leverage, said Raqab. Nimr, too, dismissed the effectiveness of betting on official Palestinian and Arab diplomatic leverage to defend UNRWA. The official Palestinian apparatus is unable to formulate an independent strategy, he said, and remains bound by the decisions of major powers. Meanwhile, Radwan said the most immediate priority in the short-term is securing sufficient funding for the agency. Guterres stressed at the June 30 conference that the agency is grappling with an unprecedented funding shortfall of around US$100 million for the coming year. UNRWA interim Commissioner General Christian Saunders has since announced $4 million  in pledges that came in response to the emergency appeals. However, the agency said the amounts received will not adequately redress UNRWA’s $100 million cashflow deficit for 2026. As UNRWA scales back its operations in the face of mounting political and financial pressure, fears are growing that the agency could ultimately be dismantled, Radwan told Mada Masr. But he argued that UNRWA’s mandate should not end until the condition upon which it was founded is fulfilled: the return of Palestinian refugees to the homes from which they were expelled in 1948. The post US urges donors to fund Board of Peace instead of UNRWA as pressures mount on refugee agency first appeared on Mada Masr .