Israeli army involved in Hamas attack: UNRWA employs “more than 450 terrorists”
March 4, 2024, 9:51 pm Listen to the article
This audio version was artificially generated. More information | Send comments
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's Palestinian aid agency, UNRWA, of employing hundreds of members of the Islamic 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” could be heard working as an Arabic teacher at a UNRWA-run school. In it, the man describes how he entered Israel during the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7. He also says in the recording that he holds 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 officials were suspected of being involved in Hamas' unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7.
Guterres considered the allegations credible
Israel's UN Ambassador Gilad Erdan also told the United Nations General Assembly that of the 13,000 UNRWA personnel in the Gaza Strip, hundreds were “active terrorists” and twelve percent were members of Hamas or the “Islamic Jihad in Israel” group. Palestine”. “UNRWA has proven to be a key part of the Hamas terrorist machine,” he said. This information could not initially be independently verified.
Several Western countries have frozen their payments to UNRWA over the allegations, including its two biggest donors, the United States and Germany. UN Secretary-General António Guterres has called the allegations credible in the past and promised a comprehensive investigation. Collaboration with several employees was immediately terminated. According to information from the DPA, Israeli authorities provided the UN with twelve names and telephone geodata from October 7th to January. These were verified by the United Nations and supported the suspicion. About 1,200 people were killed in the Hamas terrorist attack in Israel.
For decades, UNRWA has specifically addressed the needs of Palestinian refugees in the Middle East and manages, among other things, educational and health facilities. In total, more than 30 thousand people work for the organization, around 13 thousand in the Gaza Strip alone. There, UNRWA is currently considered to have no alternative but to provide humanitarian assistance to more than two million civilians suffering the consequences of the Gaza war.
However, UNRWA accused Israel of “torturing” the humanitarian 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 Palestinian UN agency said.