1:25 p.m. EST
MR MILLER: Hello, everyone. It seems dark in here. It seems like you guys are in the dark a little bit. Maybe it’s just because I haven’t been here in a few days. No, there we go. Let there be light.
QUESTION: And then there was light.
MR MILLER: And there was light. (Laughter.) Okay. I don’t have anything to start. Matt, you want to —
QUESTION: Really, you have nothing to start? Okay. So let me just start by one – to ask two separate things on the Gaza situation. One is, do you yet have a better idea of the aid – the money suspension to UNRWA, how much it is and how long it will last, that kind of thing?
MR MILLER: So —
QUESTION: And then I have a second, which is related but not the same.
MR MILLER: So it’s a complicated question to answer, and I’ll explain why. So we have provided already in this fiscal year around $121 million to UNRWA. We are the largest donor, or historically every year have been the largest donor to UNRWA, in the world. We have remaining about 300,000 – a little more than 300,000 —
QUESTION: Oh, 300,000.
MR MILLER: — in funds to – that we were planning to provide to UNRWA. That funding has been suspended. That would not be the total of our funding in this fiscal year. We would provide other funding, but it’s kind of difficult – it’s really impossible to say how much that would be, because, as you know, we are operating under a continuing resolution. We don’t know how much overall funding will be available for this fiscal year, and that would impact how much that we would be able to provide UNRWA. Historically, we have typically provided somewhere between 300 and 400 million dollars a year in funding.
QUESTION: So since October 1st, when the fiscal year started, you’ve given them 121 million?
MR MILLER: Around 121 million. Yes.
QUESTION: Okay. And then the – this 300,000 that you say was suspended that has —
MR MILLER: Planning to be delivered in the next couple of weeks, and it was suspended.
QUESTION: Okay. So that – so that means that you had – even in the CR or whatever the budget document is, you had only through the next couple weeks 121.3 million?
MR MILLER: Around – yeah, roughly. And we —
QUESTION: And then there was going to be more —
MR MILLER: More funding —
QUESTION: — if and when the supplemental gets passed?
MR MILLER: It’s – our next scheduled payment, not officially scheduled because the supplemental and the CR have not passed, but we would anticipate would have happened sometime over the summer. And the amount of the next payment would be dependent on how much funding was contained in the supplemental and a CR, or, if not a CR, a full appropriations bill.
QUESTION: But the – but the immediate impact of the temporary pause that was announced on Friday is 300,000?
MR MILLER: Correct.
QUESTION: And then – and, again, you don’t – you don’t know when that might be unfrozen or when the pause might be made permanent?
MR MILLER: So it will depend on the investigation that UNRWA is undertaking, that the United Nations is undertaking, and whatever remedial steps they put into place.
QUESTION: In the meantime, is there any way or is there any option for getting the 300,000 in suspended assistance into Gaza without going through UNRWA?
MR MILLER: No, but —
QUESTION: No?
MR MILLER: — what I would say to that is, first of all, let me just back up and say – and we made this clear in the statement. You heard the Secretary speak to this yesterday. We very much support the work that UNRWA does. We think it’s critical. There is no other humanitarian player in Gaza who can provide food and water and medicine at the scale that UNRWA does. We want to see that work continued, which is why it is so important that the United Nations take this matter seriously, that they investigate it, that there is accountability for anyone who is found to have engaged in wrongdoing, and that they take…
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