On Monday evening, Israel’s parliament defied pressure from many countries and passed laws banning the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) from Israel.
The Israelis have been aware of UNRWA links to Hamas for years and have recently produced evidence that UNRWA employees took part in the October 7th massacre and that hundreds of its staff members still have ties to terrorist organisations.
Key points of evidence include:
- At least 19 UNRWA employees participated in the 7th October 2023 attack.
- 100 UNRWA staff were identified as members of terrorist organisations in July 2024.
- As many as 1,500 UNRWA staff are said to have active ties to terrorist organisations.
- A Hamas commander, Mohammad Abu Itiwi, who led the murder and kidnapping of Israelis hiding in a roadside bomb shelter, had been employed by UNRWA since 2022.
- The head of Lebanon’s UNRWA teachers’ union, Fateh Sherif Abu el-Amin – a school principal who oversaw 65 schools and roughly 40,000 students – was also responsible for coordinating terror activities between Hamas and Hezbollah, procuring weapons, recruiting terrorists and using social media to incite attacks.
- Extensive Hamas facilities were built adjacent to UNRWA sites in the Gaza Strip, including schools and hospitals. One was a Hamas data centre located underneath, and drawing power from, UNRWA’s local headquarters.
- Long-term evidence of UNRWA’s failure to remove content from its education curriculum that glorifies terrorism and demonises Israel.
Yuli Edelstein of the Knesset Foreign Affairs committee said,
"UNRWA will not operate any representation, will not provide any service,
and won`t carry out any activity directly or indirectly in sovereign Israeli territory.”
David Mencer, an Israeli Government Spokesman, explained that links to terrorism are not confined to just a few staff:
"UNRWA as an organization is infected with terrorism …”
The withdrawal of Matthias Schmale as Gaza Director in 2021 demonstrated the influence Hamas has over UNRWA. He was forced to apologise for telling the truth about the accuracy of Israeli strikes against terrorist targets.
And back in May this year Hillel Neuer, of UN Watch, appeared before a subcommittee of the US House of Representatives’ Committee on Foreign Affairs, which held a hearing on ‘Eliminating US Aid to Terrorists.’
He described why the Colonna review into UNRWA’s operations was `fixed` from the beginning when it was commissioned by the UN Secretary-General following allegations made by the Israeli Government in January 2024.
Former French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna released the report on 22 April 2024, titled: ‘Independent Review of Mechanisms and Procedures to Ensure Adherence by UNRWA to the Humanitarian Principle of Neutrality.
But Neuer set out evidence that, from the outset, the report was intended to reassure donors who had become cautious about continuing funding after UNRWA staff were found to have supported the Hamas attack against Israel on 7th October 2023.
Here is Hillel Neuer’s testimony before the US committee:
This article was extended on 4th November 2024.