The UN on Friday fired 12 of its employees in the Gaza Strip and began an investigation into them after accusations by Israel that they had helped plan and participated in the October 7 terrorist assault that left about 1,200 Israelis dead and more than 240 others captured.
The workers, all men employed by the UN agency that aids Palestinians, known by the acronym UNRWA, are subject to a criminal investigation, two UN officials said.
“UNRWA reiterates its condemnation in the strongest possible terms of the abhorrent attacks,” said Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the agency. “Any UNRWA employee who was involved in acts of terror will be held accountable, including through criminal prosecution.”
Britain, Italy and Finland on Saturday became the latest countries to pause funding for the UNRWA. The US, Australia and Canada had already paused funding to the aid agency.
In addition, a senior UN official, briefed on the accusations, called the allegations “extremely serious and horrific”.
UNRWA has long denied Israel’s claims that it fuels anti-Israeli incitement in Gaza. But it took a sharply different approach to the more serious accusations on Friday, just days after Israel presented them to the agency.
The accusations quickly led the US to temporarily halt funding to the organization. UNRWA, which provides social services in the Gaza Strip, has been the principal agency overseeing the distribution of aid to Palestinians in Gaza amid a dire humanitarian crisis in the territory that has worsened through months of war since the October 7 attack.
“The US is extremely troubled by the allegations that 12 UNRWA employees may have been involved in the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel,” the state department said in a statement. The US is the biggest donor to the agency, providing it with $340 million in 2022 and several hundred million dollars in 2023.
Three Israeli defence officials said military intelligence officers have collected an enormous trove of information after October 7, and in the past two weeks they matched it with a second cache of intelligence that solidified an assessment that the UNRWA employees had been involved in the attack.
UNRWA was created to provide aid to millions of Palestinians across the West Bank. Since Hamas won the Palestinian elections in 2006 and then ousted a rival faction from Gaza a year later, the group, which is considered a terrorist organisation by Israel, the US and other countries, ceded many of its civil responsibilities to UNRWA.
The agency employed about 13,000 workers, most of them Palestinians, before the war began.
Israel and the UN have each accused each other of acting in bad faith since Israel launched its war in Gaza following the October 7 Hamas-led assault. The UN has accused Israel of slowing the delivery of humanitarian aid to the embattled enclave, and Israel has said the world body has promoted Hamas’ propaganda.
Those recriminations, however, are less politically sensitive than the accusation that humanitarian workers could have engaged in an
act of terror, an allegation being taken seriously by the UN leadership, the US and the EU.
On October 7, Hamas-led assailants raided towns in southern Israel, where they killed, tortured and raped victims. More than 240 people, among them children and old people, were abducted to Gaza as hostages.
Last year, the UN General Assembly passed a non-binding resolution calling on Israel to cease its war in Gaza, and Friday, the International Court of Justice, the UN’s highest judicial body, said Israel must take action to prevent acts of genocide by its forces.
Israel has previously accused UNRWA teachers of telling students in its schools to hate Israel, and it has accused UNRWA employees of collaborating with Hamas. The Trump administration suspended funding to the agency in 2018, but President Joe Biden restored it.
Israeli officials informed the UN and the US earlier this week. In recent weeks, Israel has presented new evidence that it says shows UNRWA’s animus towards Israel.
