According to Israeli documents, about 1,200 employees of the United Nations Agency for Palestine Refugees have ties to Hamas, and thousands more have close ties to members of the Gaza terror group.
The damning report, produced through interrogations of Hamas terrorists and documents recovered in Gaza, reveals that about 10% of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency’s 12,000 staff in Gaza, according to the Wall Street Journal. It claims to have ties to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
According to information provided to the United States, nearly half of the agency’s employees, or about 6,000 people, are close relatives of the extremist group that has controlled Gaza since 2007.
The report said people with ties to the terrorist organization were considered “operatives,” or participants in Hamas’ military or political activities.
“The problem with UNRWA is not just ‘a few bad apples’ involved in the October 7 massacre. The entire organization has become a nest for Hamas’s radical ideology,” a senior Israeli government official told the Journal. .
UNRWA noted that an internal U.N. investigation into the agency was underway after 12 of its members were accused last week of taking part in the October 7 terrorist attack, and that its leadership is staffed by relatives of Hamas. He declined to comment on the allegations.
While 15% of the average adult male population in Gaza has some connection to Hamas, intelligence reports show that a significantly higher proportion (almost a quarter) of UNRWA’s male staff have ties to Hamas, suggesting that the terrorist group They argue that they may have had a greater influence. towards aid agencies rather than the nation as a whole.
Israel has long warned of the apparent politicization of the aid organization, and it has emerged that former UNRWA union chief Suhail al-Hindi was elected to the Hamas leadership in 2017.
UNRWA fired Al-Hindi immediately after releasing the intelligence report.
The aid organization has fired nine of 12 staff members accused of actively participating in Hamas’ terrorist activities, including a militant commander who took part in the October 7 massacre at Kibbutz Be’eri. This includes an Arabic teacher who was revealed to be.
Two of the dozen people have already died, and the fate of the 12th person is unknown.
The fired staff also included other teachers and social workers who assisted in the terrorist attacks that killed more than 1,200 people and kidnapped more than 240.
The allegations facing the agency are shaking the world’s confidence in its ability to provide aid to the nearly 2 million Palestinian refugees captured during the Israeli-Hamas war.
Ten countries, including the United States, have cut millions of dollars in funding to UNRWA, a move that the agency’s chief Philip Lazzarini has criticized as unfairly punishing the Palestinian people as a whole.
“Our humanitarian operations in the Gaza Strip, on which 2 million people depend as a lifeline, are collapsing,” Lazzarini said over the weekend. “We are shocked that such a decision was made based on the alleged actions of a small number of individuals, and as the war continues, the need deepens and famine looms.
“Palestinians in Gaza did not need this additional collective punishment. This stains us all,” he added.
