ROME (AFP) – Italy said yesterday it would resume funding for the United Nations (UN) agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), as Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Mustafa made a visit to Rome.
“Italy has decided to resume financing specific projects intended for assistance to Palestinian refugees but only after rigorous controls that guarantee that not even a penny risks ending up supporting terrorism,” Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said.
Mustafa met with Tajani and then with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on what was his first trip to Europe since being appointed by Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas in March. Tajani said he had informed Mustafa that Rome had “arranged new funding for the Palestinian population, of a total of EUR35 million (USD38 million)”.
“Of this, five million will be allocated to UNRWA,” he said.
The remaining EUR30 million will be allocated to Italy’s “Food for Gaza” initiative in coordination with UN aid agencies.
UNRWA, which coordinates nearly all aid to Gaza, has been in crisis since January, when Israel accused about a dozen of its 13,000 Gaza employees of being involved in the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas.
That led many nations, including top donor the United States, to abruptly suspend funding to the agency, threatening its efforts to deliver aid in Gaza, although several have since resumed payments.
An independent review of UNRWA, led by French former foreign minister Catherine Colonna, found some “neutrality-related issues” but said Israel had “yet to provide supporting evidence” for its leading allegations.
It also said UNRWA was “irreplaceable and indispensable to Palestinians’ human and economic development” and was, for many, “a humanitarian lifeline”.
