When the United Nations launched an investigation a decade in the past into whether or not a handful of its staff in Gaza have been members of Hamas, it was not lengthy earlier than a senior U.N. authorized officer within the territory began receiving demise threats.
First there have been emails, despatched from nameless accounts, in response to three senior U.N. officers primarily based in Gaza at the moment.
Then got here a funeral bouquet, delivered to the primary U.N. compound, labeled with the authorized officer’s identify.
Lastly there was a stay grenade, despatched to the compound with its pin nonetheless inside, in response to two of the officers.
The U.N. evacuated the authorized officer, a British lawyer and former navy officer, hurrying him to Jerusalem, the three folks stated.
Beforehand unreported episodes like this one, from October 2014, kind a part of the again story to the present disaster embroiling UNRWA, the U.N. aid group in Gaza now sheltering greater than half of the enclave’s inhabitants.
Present and former UNRWA officers say that the company has lengthy taken critically and investigated accusations of infiltration by Hamas, which seized energy in Gaza in 2007. The company has variously responded to suggestions from Israel, the US and its personal networks. It was the sort of problem, they stated, that each one support teams working in hostile environments confronted, not distinctive to UNRWA, which has labored within the enclave for many years.
Slightly than addressing such points in a scientific course of, they handled them in a piecemeal approach largely in personal, working with officers on the United Nations in New York. Through the years, a number of individuals who had confirmed Hamas hyperlinks have been fired or left the company, together with after the 2014 investigation, present and former officers stated.
Israel has lengthy made a broader accusation: UNRWA didn’t go far sufficient to root out Hamas and was unwilling to wash up systematically. It has stated UNRWA is a very compromised group that’s too weak to guard towards infiltration and must be changed by a extra impartial support group.
Final month, Israel accused 12 UNRWA workers members of collaborating within the Hamas-led raid on Israel firstly of the warfare on Oct. 7 or within the raid’s aftermath. It has additionally stated that one in 10 UNRWA staff in Gaza are Hamas members.
These two claims — for which Israel offered some proof to the US, albeit not publicly — have led a minimum of 19 international funders to droop donations for the company. The lack of funding has endangered UNRWA’s existence when nearly all of Gazans depend upon the group for meals and shelter.
UNRWA’s leaders say the company strives to make sure its 13,000 staff in Gaza uphold requirements of neutrality, commonly coaching its workers to remain above politics and investigating those that don’t. However they add that it’s unattainable for UNRWA — like every massive group that attracts its workers from a cross-section of society — to trace the personal political allegiances of all its staff.
“What we wish to make certain is that our workers doesn’t have a public political perform, as a result of that might be fully incompatible with the perform of a civil servant,” Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA’s commissioner normal, stated in an interview with The New York Instances on Friday.
However, Mr. Lazzarini added, “Our staff are a part of the social material of Gaza and its ecosystem. And as a part of the social material in Gaza, you’ve gotten additionally Hamas.”
Whereas Mr. Lazzarini fired many of the 12 staff accused of connections to Oct. 7, he stated he had not been capable of personally examine the claims, partly due to the dire state of affairs inside Gaza, and that they’d been fired with out due course of. A separate U.N. investigative unit primarily based in New York is now trying into the accusations.
In Israel’s view, UNRWA ought to have been much more proactive in defending its neutrality. Israelis have usually stated the group has achieved too little to cease Hamas from constructing navy infrastructure near its amenities, and even from utilizing these amenities to retailer munitions.
To bolster that argument, the Israeli navy this week led a bunch of worldwide journalists, together with two for The Instances, to one of many many tunnels dug by Hamas beneath Gaza to deal with its navy infrastructure.
Roughly 20 yards beneath an upscale neighborhood of Gaza Metropolis, the tunnel ran in a southeasterly path from underneath an UNRWA-run faculty. After passing underneath a significant highway, the tunnel finally led to a subterranean communications hub, filled with servers and pc {hardware}, that lay instantly beneath UNRWA’s sprawling headquarters within the territory.
The journalists entered the tunnel by openings that had been created by the Israeli navy since its invasion started in late October; earlier than Israel captured the territory, neither the college nor the headquarters contained shafts that offered entry from UNRWA amenities to the tunnel.
The Israeli navy stated that the tunnel was shut sufficient to the floor that UNRWA employees ought to have been capable of hear its development. Additionally they pointed to wires that led into the bottom from a room contained in the UNRWA compound, which they stated led on to Hamas’s subterranean communications hub.
“It’s a must to be very naïve to assume that the UNRWA personnel didn’t know what was occurring underneath their toes,” not least as a result of the development and upkeep of the tunnel would have required aboveground help, stated Maj. Nir Dinar, a spokesman for the Israeli navy who accompanied the journalists.
“However whether or not they knew, or whether or not they didn’t know, additionally it is necessary to say that UNRWA, just like the inhabitants in Gaza, like all of us in actual fact, are victims of the terrorist group Hamas,” stated Main Dinar.
The Instances couldn’t confirm whether or not the wires, which led into the bottom from a room on the bottom stage of the compound, reached the subterranean servers. The tour of the tunnel was led by the navy and The Instances was not allowed to maneuver freely in Gaza in the course of the embed.
Mr. Lazzarini stated Israel had not introduced the claims in regards to the tunnels to UNRWA’s consideration. He questioned how the company might have been anticipated to know what was occurring so deep beneath the bottom, and famous that the tunnel community — tons of of miles lengthy — prolonged far past simply the world beneath the UNRWA compound.
“I don’t have the capability, navy experience or know-how — and even the mandate — to observe what’s beneath town,” Mr. Lazzarini stated.
Extra usually, he stated, UNRWA had little communication with Hamas management, including that he had by no means met Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s chief in Gaza, or his deputy.
“In any humanitarian emergency, we are going to take care of any nonstate actor answerable for a given inhabitants, in any other case you don’t have any entry to the inhabitants,” stated Mr. Lazzarini, who has labored for the U.N. and the Worldwide Committee for the Pink Cross in a minimum of a dozen nations and territories.
Interplay with Hamas “has at all times been on a technical nature,” he stated. Conferences with the group’s political management occur “perhaps yearly. Simply after we really feel that one thing wants actually to be addressed,” he stated.
Support consultants are skeptical that UNRWA might ever have fully shaken off Hamas’s affect due to the character of working in an authoritarian local weather.
There may be “at all times some type of infiltration,” stated Kilian Kleinschmidt, a former senior U.N. official who helped lead support operations in a number of nations.
“There has at all times been, in each U.N. workplace I do know, someone who’s positioned by some means by the federal government or by the blokes who have been in cost, to know what’s occurring inside the group,” stated Mr. Kleinschmidt.
Matthias Schmale, who directed UNRWA’s operations in Gaza from 2017 by 2021, described forming a “pragmatic working relationship” with Hamas that was however “overwhelmed with tensions and disagreements.”
Throughout Mr. Schmale’s tenure, UNRWA fired an worker who was a member of the group’s navy wing. And Mr. Schmale stated that, after a “shouting match” with a Hamas official, he efficiently persuaded the group to let UNRWA block off a tunnel that U.N. officers had found close to one in all its faculties. Along with offering shelter throughout wartime, UNRWA operates tons of of colleges and well being facilities throughout calmer intervals and supplies meals support to greater than one million residents.
“Once I say ‘pragmatic working relationship,’ it doesn’t imply agreeing ideologically or justifying what they do. It means creating the house for the place you’re employed,” Mr. Schmale stated. “You possibly can’t simply stroll in as UNRWA and construct faculties wherever you want,” he added.
Mr. Schmale was himself pressured to go away Gaza early in 2021 after a backlash from each Hamas and UNRWA’s personal employees over feedback to an Israeli channel during which he was perceived to reward the precision of Israel’s strikes on Gaza.
Israeli leaders, together with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, now wish to exchange UNRWA with a distinct company.
However officers from UNRWA and Israel alike warn that such a change could be unattainable to enact with out worsening the already dire humanitarian disaster in Gaza.
UNRWA has by far and away the most important pool of support employees on the bottom in Gaza. If the company shuts down, any successor group could be more likely to merely work with the identical staff, making any change beauty, Mr. Lazzarini stated. And absent UNRWA’s faculty system, which educates round 300,000 Gazan youngsters, there could be no quick approach to get many college students again in school, he stated.
At a current interagency planning assembly, Ghassan Alian, an Israeli normal who oversees the division inside the protection ministry that liaises with Palestinian leaders and support teams like UNRWA, instructed fellow Israeli officers that Israel ought to push to dismantle the company in the long run, in response to a senior navy official current on the assembly.
Basic Alian additionally warned that any effort to shut the company earlier than the tip of the warfare would hurt not solely the civilian inhabitants but additionally Israel’s warfare effort, the navy official stated. Israel’s capability to increase its invasion is partly reliant on a useful and impartial support operation for Gazan civilians, in response to 4 officers concerned in Israeli navy planning.