Involvement in Hamas attack
Israel’s army: UNRWA employs “more than 450 terrorists”
March 4, 2024, 9:51 p.m
The Israeli government has been accusing the UN Palestinian Relief Agency of working for Hamas for some time now. Initially there was talk of a dozen. Now the military claims that hundreds of members of the terrorist organization work for UNRWA.
Israel has accused the UN Palestinian relief agency UNRWA of employing hundreds of members of the Islamist Hamas and other radical organizations. UNRWA employs “more than 450 terrorists,” the Israeli army said.
The army distributed a recording in which it said a “terrorist” can be heard working as an Arabic teacher at a school run by UNRWA. In it, the man describes how he entered Israel during the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7th. He also says in the recording that he is holding Israeli women hostage. The AFP news agency was initially unable to independently verify the allegations. Serious allegations against UNRWA had already become known at the end of January. At the time, it was said that twelve employees were suspected of being involved in Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7th.
Guterres called the allegations credible
Israel’s UN Ambassador Gilad Erdan also said at the United Nations General Assembly that of the 13,000 UNRWA employees in the Gaza Strip, hundreds were “active terrorists” and twelve percent were members of Hamas or the group “Islamic Jihad in Palestine.” “UNRWA has proven to be a key part of Hamas’ terror machine,” he said. This information could not initially be independently verified.
Several Western countries have frozen their payments to UNRWA because of the allegations, including its two largest donors, the United States and Germany. UN Secretary-General António Guterres has called the allegations credible in the past and promised comprehensive investigation. Collaboration with several employees was immediately terminated. According to dpa information, the Israeli authorities provided the UN with twelve names and geodata from telephones from October 7th in January. These were checked by the United Nations and supported the suspicion. Around 1,200 people were killed in the Hamas terrorist attack in Israel.
UNRWA has been specifically looking after the needs of Palestinian refugees in the Middle East for decades and operates, among other things, educational and health facilities. In total, more than 30,000 people work for the organization, around 13,000 in the Gaza Strip alone. There, UNRWA is currently seen as having no alternative to providing humanitarian care to more than two million civilians who are suffering from the consequences of the Gaza war.
Meanwhile, UNRWA accused Israel of “torturing” the aid organization’s employees. “Some” UNRWA employees reported to their teams that they were “forced to make confessions under torture and ill-treatment” when questioned about the relationship between the agency and Hamas, the UN Palestinian agency said.