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Germany and Austria have suspended all aid to the Palestinian territories in response to the terror attack against Israel by Gazan militants, ramping up pressure on the EU to also freeze its assistance.
The German government in Berlin said on Monday that bilateral aid worth €125mn due this year has been suspended pending a “comprehensive” examination into how such aid was being used.
Austrian aid worth €19mn has also been stopped.
“The extent of the terror is so horrific . . . that we cannot go back to business as usual,” foreign minister Alexander Schallenberg told Austrian national radio. “We will therefore put all payments from Austrian development co-operation on ice for the time being,” he added.
Multiple EU states and some commissioners are also pushing to mirror the German move on an EU level, officials briefed on the discussions told the Financial Times.
“It is something we are all seriously considering,” said one of the officials.
The bloc’s 27 foreign ministers are to convene on Tuesday for an emergency meeting and will discuss the funding issue. They were already scheduled to meet in Muscat, Oman, as part of the EU-Gulf Cooperation Council.
The EU has pledged €1.18bn in financial support from 2021 to 2024 in a joint programme for the West Bank and Gaza, which is controlled by Hamas.
The European Commission denied that any money was going to Hamas. “The EU is not funding Hamas or their terrorist activities directly or indirectly,” it said, adding that it has had a “no contact policy” with the group since 2007.
The projects are delivered by development partners such as NGOs. The latest agreement says these partners “will continue to support national institutions, local government units and service providers to improve the sustainable operation of water and wastewater infrastructure” in Gaza as well as the territory’s energy supply.
Commission officials were however discussing “how the recent tragic events might affect our current and future development assistance”.
“The aggression by Hamas has to stop and the hostages be released,” the Commission said, adding that Israel had the right to self defence. In the surprise attacks on Saturday, more than 700 Israelis — mostly civilians — were murdered and some 100 people were taken hostage in the country’s deadliest ever single day of conflict.
Some EU capitals, including Rome, are not in favour of freezing bilateral or EU funding. Italy will continue its humanitarian aid to the Palestinian territories, the Italian foreign ministry said Monday.
German development minister Svenja Schulze said on Sunday evening that the attacks marked a “terrible turning point” and that Germany was seeking to co-ordinate with allies on how best to respond. Schulze, from chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democratic party, said the German government had to review “its entire engagement for the Palestinian territories”.
Israel has promised an overwhelming military retaliation, focused on the Gaza Strip, the narrow coastal enclave home to around 2mn Palestinians, living in cramped and often squalid conditions, from where the attacks were plotted and launched.
On Monday, the Israeli military said it had secured the border regions around Gaza, including the several gaps in the heavily fortified perimeter fence that terrorists had made to swarm into southern Israel and begin their rampage. Israel said it had bombed more than 1,000 targets in Gaza overnight.
Germany said it was confident its existing aid commitments were primarily used for “long term development co-operation”, citing sanitation and training projects as examples.
Berlin provides no funding to the Palestinian Authority, it said. It stressed that the block on payments was temporary.
Lawmakers from the opposition CDU said Monday’s suspension should only be considered a “first step”, however, and demanded a more robust response.
In an interview with Zeit Online on Monday, the CDU’s foreign policy spokesperson Roderich Kiesewetter called for a cross-departmental “general review”, involving the foreign ministry, development ministry, interior ministry and ministry of economics of how all German aid was being spent in Palestine, and to which organisations it was being directed.
He singled out organisations in Germany in receipt of government funds which he said had links to terror organisations including Hamas and Hizbollah, the Lebanese group.
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