Swiss Parliament Adopts Motion to “Immediately Suspend” Support for UNRWA
The Swiss Parliament’s lower house, the National Council, adopted a motion yesterday to « immediately suspend » support for UNRWA, by a vote of 99 to 88. Two related motions called on Switzerland to instead send aid directly to Gazans, and to seek a solution to replace UNRWA altogether.
The parliamentary motion’s explanatory comments specifically cite the reports of UN Watch, the independent non-governmental organization based in Geneva, in decrying UNRWA staff glorification of terrorism.
When the parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee held a hearing in April on UNRWA, Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, was the only critical voice to be invited as an expert witness.
In his presentation to the parliament, Neuer had presented a dossier on UNRWA’s terror ties, and exposed the « independent audit » released in April by former French foreign minister Catherine Colonna—which was used by Germany and other states as a pretext to reinstate funding—as a complete farce.
Comment from Hillel Neuer
“By calling for an immediate suspension of UNRWA funding, and for the agency to be replaced, the parliament of Switzerland has sent a powerful and unequivocal message: that UNRWA is tainted to the core by its complicity with terrorism,” said Neuer.
« This is the first defunding of UNRWA following the rigged Colonna Report, and the Swiss parliament’s decision amounts to a devastating rejection of the entire report. »
“The rebuke of UNRWA is especially poignant coming from Switzerland, which is the guardian of the Geneva Conventions, and is rightly upholding international humanitarian law against an agency that is cynically abusing those principles. »
« The vote is also a slap in the face to UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini, a Swiss national who invested an enormous amount of time this past year lobbying in Switzerland to block this motion. Lazzarini failed, and the facts prevailed. »
« Despite numerous attempts by UN Watch to pass warnings to Mr. Lazzarini of the terror ties of his employees, he has repeatedly refused to meet with us. »
« As I have said before, if Mr. Lazzarini and UNRWA truly cared about the complicity of senior UNRWA staff with terrorism, he would agree to meet with me and see our latest dossier. I am again urging him to meet with me. I will meet with him in Geneva, Amman, Jerusalem. I will meet with him anywhere.”
« But the truth is that the real leaders of UNRWA are not the handful of internationals who do the agency’s fundraising in the West. It is rather individuals like Fathi al-Sharif, head of UNRWA’s staff union in Lebanon and a senior leader of Hamas. Or officials like Suhail al-Hindi, who long headed UNRWA’s staff union in Gaza and is an elected member of the Hamas Politburo alongside Yahya Sinwar. »
« The entire organization has been infiltrated and hijacked by Hamas terrorists to serve the terror group’s war aims. »
« Over 173,000 people have signed UN Watch’s petition demanding that Western democracies defund UNRWA and immediately seek a solution to replace its services. We commend Switzerland for acting on this appeal. »
UNRWA Sued For Promoting Terrorism
UNRWA and Lazzarini are currently the object of at least six legal proceedings alleging that the agency promotes terrorism, in Canada, France and the US. An internal UN investigation fired at least 9 UNRWA employees for their involvement in the October 7th massacre.
In 2018, Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis said that UNRWA “has become part of the problem. UNRWA supplies the ammunition to continue the conflict. By supporting UNRWA, we keep the conflict alive. It’s a perverse logic.”
In 2019, Switzerland temporarily suspended funding for UNRWA, joining Belgium, the Netherlands and New Zealand, in wake of an ethics reportthat implicated then commissioner-general Pierre Krahenbuhl (now the head of the ICRC) in a corruption and abuse scandal. Contrary to certain reports, he was never cleared.
