This week, the Dutch government announced that it has suspended its aid contributions to the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC), a Palestinian organisation believed to have ties with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terror group.
Abdul Razeq Farraj, the UAWC’s Finance and Administration Director, was indicted in October 2019 for his involvement in a PFLP bombing attack in August 2019 that killed 17-year old Israeli Rina Shnerb and injured her father and brother. The suspected commander of the PFLP terror cell that prepared and detonated the bomb was Samer Arbid, an accountant for UAWC at the time of his arrest.
The UAWC has received around $23 million from the Dutch government in financial support since 2010.
The Netherlands’ Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation, Sigrid Kaag, has confirmed that the UAWC used Dutch subsidies to pay salaries to Farraj and Arbid during their trial.
The UAWC was one of a number of organisations that recently received funds from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the World Health Organisation as part of a Covid-19 emergency response plan.
An investigation carried out by the NGO Monitor research institute in May found that several groups receiving funds from OCHA are tied to the PFLP, which is designated as a terror group by Israel, the EU, the US and Canada.
“Among OCHA’s NGO partners with ties to the PFLP are the Health Work Committees (HWC), Union of Health Work Committees (UHWC), Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC), Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees (UPWC), and Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR)”, the report found.
Contributors to the Covid-19 emergency response plan included Canada, the EU, France, Germany, Ireland, Kuwait, Sweden, Norway, Spain and the UK.
