The Jewish state continues to point the finger at UNRWA as complicit in the Palestinian Islamist movement. What the United Nations agency denies.
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It is a real parallel administration in the Gaza Strip with 13,000 employees. The United Nations agency for aid to Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, has come under fire from Israel, which has accused it for several weeks of being infiltrated by Hamas. The UN denies the Jewish state’s allegations and is due to publish by the end of April the results of an internal investigation led by Catherine Colona, former French foreign minister.
After the accusations against twelve UNRWA employees allegedly involved in the October 7 attacks, Israel is increasing its accusations against the agency. The Jewish state suspects it of being infiltrated by members of the Palestinian Islamist movement. “Hamas has infiltrated UNRWA, with its employees controlling certain sectorsestimates Amir Weissbrod, Israeli diplomat. You should know that UNRWA manages half of the schools in the Gaza Strip. So Hamas benefits, as we saw in this war. It uses buildings, whether hospitals, clinics or schools, to launch terrorist attacks.”
UNRWA ensures it inspects its schools and health centers
UNRWA, which preemptively dismissed its twelve employees in question, regularly monitors its premises in Gaza, would like to point out Tamara al-Rifaï, a spokesperson for the agency: “We inspect our schools, our health centers, our workplaces to make sure there are no weapons and there is no use. And we report to Israel and to our partner states, our donor states, and we publish publicly what we found inside our premises if we found anything.”
In its anti-UNRWA campaign, Israel is working to ensure that the agency is gradually replaced by other UN organizations such as UNICEF or the World Food Program, or even by foreign states.
