‘Too little and too late’: Israel slams whitewash probe of UNRWA terror ties
Israelis were angered by a United Nations announcement that nine members of the UN Relief and Works Agency will be fired for their roles in the October 7 attacks, telling The Press Service of Israel the institution failed to investigate approximately 100 other staffers.
Israelis demonstrate outside UNRWA’s Jerusalem headquarters on Feb. 5, 2024. Photo by Yoav Dudkevitch/TPS
“UNRWA and certainly the UN should be investigating the claims, and beyond that, all the donor countries. However, they’re not capable,” said Anne Herzberg, a legal advisor for NGO-Monitor, a Jerusalem-based organization that monitors the activities of non-governmental organizations.
“It doesn’t look like they did their job, their job as investigators is to also look beyond. Even without all the names that Israel provided them, given all of the news reports, everything that’s happened during the war, the UN investigatory body had an obligation to look at this issue more broadly. Instead, they were trying to make it as narrow as possible to protect UNRWA,” she said.
Israel gave the UN the names of around 100 UNRWA personnel who participated in the October 7 attacks, held hostages, or were members of Hamas. However, the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services, which investigates mismanagement, fraud, corruption, and other misconduct, only probed 19. The OIOS did not indicate why it did not investigate the dozens of other workers.
Of the 19 staffers who were investigated, the OIOS said nine “may have been involved in the armed attacks” and that “the employment of these individuals will be terminated in the interests of the Agency.”
Of the remaining 10 UNRWA staffers, the OIOS said there was “insufficient evidence” to link nine to the attacks and “no evidence was obtained” for the tenth.
But Israeli officials said they did provide the UN with evidence.
“The UN investigation, which focused exclusively on 19 UNRWA workers, is a disgrace! Too little and too late,” tweeted Israeli Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan. “The investigation ignored the thousands of agency employees involved in the terrorist activities of Hamas, and the scope of the involvement. Israel has provided the UN with precise details of over a hundred UNRWA employees who are members of the terrorist organization Hamas.”
Said Herzberg, “These are criminals who have committed international crimes, war crimes, crimes against humanity, maybe genocide, and they should be handed over to law enforcement, not simply being fired.”
‘Everyone is Palestinian’
Former Knesset member and author Dr. Einat Wilf told TPS-IL that UNRWA’s “facade” makes it difficult to hold the agency accountable.
“One of the things that is also part of the facade and the confusion of UNRWA is that people actually think that the letters UN mean something. So when they hear UNRWA employees, people imagine some Swedish and Norwegian people who have come to Gaza to help Palestinians in distress,” Wilf said
“As I’ve explained to people, all of UNRWA — except for very, very few people at the top who are Italian and Swiss, and they are the people who maintain the facade — everyone is a Palestinian. They are all local. They are people who were born in Gaza, living in Gaza, people in the West Bank, in Jordan, in Syria, in Lebanon. They are all local. They are all Palestinians. So, it’s the most basic point and it’s the one that in many ways I find the hardest to convey.”
Israel intelligence incriminating 12 staffers of their participation, including using UNRWA vehicles and facilities during the massacres was leaked to The New York Times in January. Afterward, The Wall Street Journal reported that one in 10 UNRWA employees was either an active member of Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad, or had ties to those terror groups.
UNRWA is completely penetrated by Hamas, and the agency’s overwhelming presence in Gaza — providing education, health care and financial aid — means “all of those who participated in October 7 were touched by UNRWA,” Wilf insisted.
Agency Under Fire
UNRWA, which supports Palestinian refugees, has been under fire for months, with Israeli officials demanding the agency be stripped of its authority in Gaza and defunded amid revelations that members of the agency’s staff participated in Hamas’s October 7 attacks. The Israeli government is bypassing UNRWA in distributing humanitarian aid.
More than 100 survivors of Hamas’s October 7 attacks filed a $1 billion lawsuit against UNRWA in June, accusing the agency of “aiding and abetting” the terror group. According to the suit, the lead plaintiff, 84-year-old Ditza Heiman of Kibbutz Nir Oz, was held captive for seven weeks in the home of a Palestinian man who said he was a UNRWA teacher at a boy’s school.
Israel’s largest bank froze UNRWA’s account in February over suspicious financial transfers that the agency failed to adequately explain. That same month, Israeli forces discovered a Hamas complex located directly under the UNRWA’s Gaza City headquarters and connected directly to the agency’s electricity system. The facility included numerous computer servers belonging to the terror group.
The Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee advanced legislation in July designating UNRWA as a “terror organization,” stripping the agency of its diplomatic immunity, tax-exempt status, and other legal benefits. The bill faces legislative hurdles, but is expected to pass.
Palestinian refugees are the only refugee population with its own dedicated.UN agency. The rest of the world’s refugees fall under the mandate of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. Israeli officials have called for UNRWA to be closed and for Palestinian refugees to be brought under the responsibility of the UNHCR.
At least 1,200 people were killed, and 252 Israelis and foreigners were taken hostage in Hamas’s attacks on Israeli communities near the Gaza border on October 7. Of the 115 remaining hostages, 39 have been declared dead. Hamas has also been holding captive two Israeli civilians since 2014 and 2015, and the bodies of two soldiers killed in 2014.
