The United Nations Relief Agency (UNRWA) has come under intense scrutiny as mega-terror outfit Hamas server farm was discovered beneath its headquarters in Gaza while according to media reports Israeli intelligence found that at least a dozen of UNRWA employees were directly involved in October 7 Hamas pogrom in Israel, and at least 1,200 of employees of UNRWA had ties to Hamas. Additionally, according to UN Watch report, over 3,000 UNRWA employees cheered on October 7 on private communications channels.
It is important to note – out of 30,000 employees of UNRWA, over 13,000 are based in Gaza. The latest revelation of this organization’s direct involvement in terrorist activities has prompted Israel in pressing demand for replacement of UNRWA although the United Nations still claims stating UNRWA is indispensable: “there is no way any organization can replace or substitute the tremendous capacity, the fabric of UNRWA, their ability and their knowledge of the population in Gaza”.
Quoting media sources American Jewish Committee said, “Israel revealed that six UNRWA employees were part of the wave of terrorists who breached the Gaza-Israel border and massacred civilians inside of Israel. Additionally, two helped to kidnap Israelis, two others were tracked to sites where hundreds of Israeli civilians were shot and killed. Others coordinated logistics for the assault, including procuring weapons”.
It further said, “Among the 12 UNRWA employees who were linked to the terror attacks, seven were primary or secondary school teachers, including two math teachers, two Arabic language teachers, and one primary school teacher”.
According to The Wall Street Journal, a UNRWA Arabic teacher was also a Hamas commander and took part in the terrorist attack on Kibbutz Be’eri, where 97 Israelis were slaughtered in their homes in the early morning of October 7, and about 26 people were taken hostage.
Mathew Miller, the US State Department spokesperson said, Israeli intelligence has briefed the United States on the findings of UNRWA’s direct involvement with terrorist activities which led the US to announce on January 26, 2024 that it would temporarily suspend funding to the UN Agency.
Miller said, “The Department of State has temporarily paused additional funding for UNRWA while we review these allegations and the steps the United Nations is taking to address them.
“There must be complete accountability for anyone who participated in the heinous attacks of October 7”.
Several other countries have also joined the U.S. in suspending payments to UNRWA, including the UK, Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Australia, Finland, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Canada, and Japan.
In his first direct comments on the issue, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that the world body would hold to account “any UN employee involved in acts of terror” and called them “abhorrent alleged acts”, but also implored governments to continue to support the UN refugee agency for Palestinians.
“The tens of thousands of men and women who work for UNRWA, many in some of the most dangerous situations for humanitarian workers, should not be penalized. The dire needs of the desperate populations they serve must be met”.
On February 10, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) announced it discovered a tunnel shaft near a school in Gaza run by the UNRWA that connected underground to UNRWA’s central headquarters in the Gaza Strip.
The tunnel in Gaza City’s Rimal neighborhood is approximately 700 meters long and 18 meters deep.
The IDF and Israel’s Shin Bet security agency said that the underground tunnel served as “a significant asset of Hamas’s military intelligence and passed under the building that serves as UNRWA’s main headquarters in the Gaza Strip”.
The subterranean data center included an electrical room, industrial battery power banks, and living quarters for Hamas terrorists operating the servers.
Additionally, the IDF said electrical cables led directly from the UNRWA building to the tunnel below, providing power to the Hamas infrastructure.
In a statement posted on X, UNRWA head Philippe Lazzarini denied knowledge of the Hamas data center under his agency’s headquarters.
Lazzarini says UNRWA “did not know what is under its headquarters in Gaza” and that the reports “merit an independent inquiry that is currently not possible to undertake given Gaza is an active war zone”.
Lazzarini said that UNRWA staff left the Gaza headquarters on October 12, five days after the Hamas attack on October 7, and that the agency has not used the compound since.
UNRWA, he said, “is a human development and humanitarian organization that does not have the military and security expertise nor the capacity to undertake military inspections of what is or might be under its premises”.
“In the past, whenever (a) suspicious cavity was found close to or under UNRWA premises, protest letters were promptly filed to parties to the conflict, including both the de facto authorities in Gaza (Hamas) and the Israeli authorities”.
Reacting to the statement from Lazzarini, Israel’s Foreign Minister, Israel Katz, called for the UNRWA head to step down.
“The exposure of UNRWA’s Gaza headquarters’ deep involvement with Hamas, including its use for terror activities and as an access point to terror tunnels, requires immediate action”, says Katz.
Additionally, Israeli government spokesman Eylon Levy said that UNRWA was fully aware of the tunnel.
“They knew, and they didn’t find out from the media. Israeli authorities invited [UNRWA] leadership to tour the Hamas Server Farm under UNRWA HQ in Gaza City. Lazzarini ignored the invitation”, Levy said.
UNRWA, established in 1949, following the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, is separate from the United Nations’ main agency that handles refugees and displaced persons, known as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), created in 1950-51. UNHCR handles all other refugees, while UNRWA is just solely dedicated to the Palestinian refugees and their descendants.
It may be mentioned here that UNRWA is unique in that its policy allows the inheritance of refugee status across generations. This practice has expanded the original count of an estimated 750,000 Palestinian refugees to over 5 million today, significantly amplifying the refugee issue in the region. The status of automatic inheritance of the refugee classification continues and worsens the Palestinian problem – and remains one of the main points of criticism against UNRWA.
UNRWA’s funding primarily comes from voluntary contributions of UN member states. In 2022, significant donors included the United States, Germany, the European Union, and Sweden, together contributing over 60 percent of UNRWA’s budget of US$1.6 billion.
In 2023, the US provided US$422 million to UNRWA.
In 2018, then-US President Donald Trump suspended US funding to the agency, accusing it of bias and incitement against Israel. President Biden restored the funding in 2021. In my opinion, this was one of the many disastrous decisions of Biden. As UNRWA has now been proven to have direct connections with terrorist groups and terrorism, no nation in the world should donate even a single dollar to this entity.
