Netherlands feared ‘great suffering’ in Gaza after UNRWA snub, memo reveals
Al Jazeera
Dutch officials also expressed concern about regional destabilisation, newly released documents reveal.
Days after the Netherlands suspended funding to the United Nations aid agency for Palestinian refugees, Dutch officials expressed fears that pausing support for too long could lead to “great human suffering” and regional destabilisation, newly released documents reveal.
In a memo written after the Netherlands joined more than a dozen countries in pausing funding to UNRWA following Israeli claims of links to Hamas, foreign ministry officials stressed the need for the UN agency to continue its work.
“Humanitarian assistance and basic services provided by UNRWA to Gaza and the wider region must be maintained at this stage of the conflict. Other organisations are not adequately equipped for this purpose, including logistical capacities. Further regional destabilisation due to loss of UNRWA capacities must be prevented,” officials in the ministry’s human rights department wrote in the memo to Foreign Minister Hanke Bruins Slot on February 2.
Bruins Slot, a member of the centre-right Christian Democratic Appeal party, expressed agreement with her colleagues in a hand-written note.
“Agreed! Touches whole region that is already unstable,” she wrote on the memo.
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