The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) believes an independent investigation into Israel's allegations of “hiring terrorists” in the Gaza Strip is “very important,” a spokesman for that organization told AFP in Amman on Wednesday.
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Major donors – including the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and Japan – announced the suspension of their aid to UNRWA after Israel accused 12 of its employees of involvement in the October 7 attack by the Palestinian movement Hamas.
“We have 33,000 employees (…), it is extremely important for us to conduct an independent investigation into the individual cases that Israel has raised,” Unrwa spokeswoman Tamara Alrifaï told AFP.
“We received allegations from the Israeli government about 12 names in Gaza, we compared these names with our records of 13,000 personnel in Gaza and were able to match eight of these names,” he said. She adds.
Unrwa said it had laid off most of the affected employees.
The Israeli government accused the UN agency on Tuesday of being “fundamentally compromised” by letting Hamas “use its infrastructure” to carry out its military activities and by “hiring terrorists.”
The agency has “hired terrorists on a massive scale” among its 13,000 employees in Gaza, said Israeli government spokesman Eylon Levy.
He provided no evidence to support these allegations, which the AFP could not verify.
The UNRWA spokesman also pointed out that “so far, 15 countries have announced that they will freeze their contributions to UNRWA,” and warned: “If they stick to their decision, the impact on Gazans will be catastrophic.”
In this Palestinian territory under complete siege by Israel and in the throes of a severe humanitarian crisis, entire neighborhoods have been destroyed by bombings, forcing 1.7 million of its 2.4 million residents to flee their homes, according to the United Nations.
“It will be a catastrophe (…) because the humanitarian situation in Gaza is already catastrophic, where the war continues, where the displacement continues, where people live mainly in UNRWA shelters, where they receive flour from Unrwa, to Baking bread where you can receive medical care from Unrwa,” emphasized Tamara Alrifaï.
However, she said UNRWA, which provides aid to around two million people in Gaza, had received “assurances of support” in recent days from donors who had suspended their funding.