PLO Tells UNRWA: Keep Qalqilya Hospital Open, Protect Workers
The Palestine Liberation Organization’s higher committee on UNRWA told the agency’s acting leadership on Sunday, November 8, to withdraw measures that would dismiss staff, shrink services or close institutions, including any move to shut or downgrade Qalqilya Hospital in the occupied West Bank. The demand followed a meeting with acting Commissioner-General Christian Saunders and senior deputies, according to a WAFA report on the talks.
The committee argued that a funding crisis cannot be solved by making Palestinian refugees and UNRWA workers absorb the loss through fewer jobs, shorter hours and closed facilities. It called for prior consultation with staff unions, an end to unilateral decisions and a financing drive ahead of the agency’s advisory commission meeting in Brussels. On the hospital, it urged UNRWA to strengthen a facility that serves refugees and surrounding communities rather than dismantle departments or transfer medical staff elsewhere.
Saunders, in the Palestinian account, said UNRWA must balance limited income against salaries and operating costs and is reviewing how it works. The agency’s public position this week adds important qualification: UNRWA says it is not being dismantled and that no final decision has been taken on possible changes to staffing or operational presence. But it also says an $80 million cash-flow deficit, accumulated liabilities and falling contributions threaten its ability to sustain education, health care, relief and protection across Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.
Those warnings are already landing in workplaces. UNRWA says it reduced service-delivery hours and corresponding salaries for most Palestinian staff by 20 percent in January. Earlier in the year, Saunders told a UN pledging conference that the agency had already made $175 million in austerity and cost-control measures. Staff unions and camp committees have responded that another round of retrenchment would transfer an international funding failure directly to workers and families who rely on the services.
That is why the Qalqilya hospital dispute has become more than an administrative argument. It is a test of whether a universal institution can preserve fixed public infrastructure when donors provide money voluntarily and unpredictably. A hospital cannot be reduced in neat fractions without consequences: fewer departments, fewer nurses and longer referrals mean patients travel farther or wait longer, while the burden shifts to families and an already strained Palestinian health system.
The current confrontation also follows visible resistance. Refugee service committees and the Arab Employees Union rallied at Balata camp on October 27 against cuts, dismissals and plans affecting the hospital. In Gaza, displaced families are entering winter under conditions described in Pamphlets’ recent report on flooded tents; in the West Bank, the UN has also recorded mounting violence during the olive harvest. Those pressures make the loss of routine health and relief services especially consequential.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres said on Friday that he remained fully committed to defending UNRWA’s fundamental role and again called for its vital work to be fully funded. The PLO committee’s position is sharper: donors should close the gap, UNRWA management should negotiate with unions, and refugees should not be asked to finance the agency’s survival through vanishing services. That is a defensible labor principle and a practical warning. Once a public institution is hollowed out, restoring it costs more than keeping its staff and facilities functioning.
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