World Vision Australia representatives met with Israeli Law Centre, Shurat HaDin, last week to discuss accusations that a World Vision Australia-funded charity in Gaza is controlled by UN-listed terrorist group the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

The meeting was convened by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry with a view to “achieving a resolution of the issues.”

Earlier this year, Shurat HaDin called for World Vision Australia to cease funding Gaza-based charity the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC) through Australian aid agency, AusAID. The Israeli organisation claimed it had “conclusive evidence” to show UAWC was supporting the PFLP.

In letters to World Vision and AusAID, Shurat HaDin said World Vision Australia, by supporting UAWC was “aiding and abetting Palestinian terrorism, and thereby violating Australian and United States anti-terrorism laws”.

In February, World Vision Australia said it had frozen activities with UAWC and was investigating any terrorist links, despite being only eighteen months into a five-year program to support the organisation. UAWC helps deliver plant and seedling nurseries to provide food security to thousands of low-income houses in the West Bank and Gaza, World Vision said it had frozen activities with the UAWC and was investigating the suggested terrorist ties.

A UAWC protest. Image: Australian Jewish News

But on 31 May, AusAID announced its investigation had found “no evidence to support claims” that World Visions’ funding of the UAWC was in violation of the Charter of the United Nations or anti-terrorism laws.

Minister for Foreign Affairs, Senator Bob Carr said the work of World Vision helps raise Palestinians from hunger and poverty. “That can only reduce the capacity of terrorists to win recruits,” he said.

World Vision Australia has since resumed funding the UAWC through AusAID and Shurat HaDin has also resumed its allegations, including the threat of legal action.

In a letter to Shurat HaDin in late-September, World Vision Australia CEO Tim Costello said he was “disappointed by…ongoing public claims about our project in Gaza…which in our view remain unsubstantiated and, in some circumstances, defamatory.”

Shurat HaDin continues to assert that the UAWC is “established by the PFLP, is controlled by senior PFLP operatives, makes its assets available to the PFLP and acts in coordination with and to advance the interests of the PFLP.”

Responding to these claims, Costello referenced the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) factions that were affiliated with many grass-roots Palestinian organisations in the 1980s – including the UAWC. However he says affiliations changed significantly after the Oslo Accords in 1993, an attempt to resolve ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflicts by setting self-government arrangements between the Israeli Government and the PLO.

“From then,” writes Costello, “various Palestinian organisations, including UAWC, professionalized their activities and management structures and distanced themselves from political factionalisation.”

Costello also concedes that the UAWC is “opposed to the loss of arable Palestinian land and from time to time there may well have been protests at which PFLP members participated – either as protestors and/or speakers in support of the airing of UAWC grievances.” But he says such interactions were not tantamount to UAWC sanction or approval of the PFLP’s commitment to violence.

“We believe that UAWC is a bona fide Palestinian agricultural development entity and, despite the allegations you have made, that it operates independently of the PFLP,” he wrote.

“World Vision remains committed to projects assisting the people of Gaza who remain amongst the world’s most needy.”

World Vision Australia has told Shurat HaDin that if there are any Palestinian organisations operating in Gaza “with whom you believe we could partner without criticism”, that suggestions would be welcomed.

Both organisations have agreed to refrain from making further public statements while they are in discussions with the Executive Council of Australian Jewry to resolve the issues.

World Vision Australia told Eternity it expects to have more developments in the next few weeks and are considering ideas put forward by Shurat HaDin to resolve their complaints.