The just-released investigation report also documented that now, over three months after psychopathic war criminal Netanyahu and his ministers made those allegations, Israel has provided no evidence of any kind to prove its statements were anything more than baseless lies intended to cause further harm to Palestinians in Gaza.
In January 2024, just as Israel was marking three months straight of blocking access to nearly all food, water, fuel, medical supplies and having slaughtered over 20,000 innocent Palestinians, the Netanyahu regime notified the United Nations and the United States that it had proof at least twelve members of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East had collaborated with Hamas in multiple ways.
In a six-page dossier provided to the United Nations, U.S. and multiple other nations who regularly supplied funding for the agency, Israel claimed its Mossad and other intelligence services had identified that core group of twelve as having direct involvement with Hamas in planning and coordinating the October 7, 2023, paratrooper invasion in northern Israel. This was the attack that Israel used as the justification for the latest phase of its genocidal war against the Palestinian people which to date murdered over 34,000 people along the Gaza strip.
That Israeli dossier also alleged another 190 individuals within UNRWA provided logistics guidance and special on-the-ground intelligence services to guide Hamas in the October 7 mission.
Soon after original document sent was sent out to countries Israel sees as its enablers in the Palestinian genocide, other communications from Israel suggested the Hamas infiltration in UNRWA might be even larger than just the 190 + 12 numbers. The Israeli spokespeople said possibly as much as 10% of the 13,000 UNRWA workers who were at the time in Gaza were supporting Hamas one way or another.
The dossier and the verbal reports included no proof of the allegations Israel raised. The Israeli authorities said the proof would be coming and submitted to all parties involved.
It was also considered suspicious at the time that the allegations were made just as Israel was being tried in the International Court of Justice at The Hague for international war crimes and extensive human rights abuses. At the same time, Israel ramped up its attacks on the UN through social media trolls and bots.
In less than 24 hours after Israel made its accusations, the corrupt White House announced it was immediately suspending funding for the UNRWA agency. Just last month it also passed a funding bill for the government which banned the U.S. from providing any support for the UNRWA until March 2025 unless a new funding authorization was provided.
Within just days later, Israeli puppet-states of Australia, Austria, Canada, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Romania, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom also suspended all donations to the UNRWA.
Within weeks afterwards a total of 16 nations overall had suspended all funding for the agency. The total amount of pledges outstanding from those who held back their money just on the word of the Israeli government was $450 million overall.
All did so solely based on the fake six-page dossier. There were no internal investigations, and despite that the UNRWA immediately fired nine of the twelve specifically identified suspected individuals immediately as a means of survival, that was not enough.
The UNRWA, which supports roughly 5.9 million Palestinians including 2 million in Gaza plus others in the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria; at least 58 refugee camps, support for 706 schools with over 543,000 students in various locations; and 140 primary health facilities which before the Gaza genocide handled over 7 million people annually; had previously received $1.17 billion in aid pledges from many countries around the world.
The U.S. was responsible for $343.9 million of those pledges. Less than half of that was delivered and the rest shut down indefinitely. Together with Germany’s $202.1 million, the EU’s direct pledge of $114.2 million, and Sweden’s $60.9 million, the top four donors were responsible for 61.4% of all contributions planned for the agency. Of those, only Sweden did not bend to the will of the Israeli government by cutting off all UNRWA aid entirely just based on the promise of future evidence proving UNRWA’s complicity.
In a statement made at the time of the pledge shutdowns, Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UNRWA, pleaded with the world to reconsider its thoughtless act of dropping support at such a critical time for the agency.
“It would be immensely irresponsible to sanction an Agency and an entire community it serves because of allegations of criminal acts against some individuals, especially at a time of war, displacement and political crises in the region,” he said.
In March, Israel added to its claims that it had identified four other specific members of UNRWA who it said had provided direct support to Hamas. Once again it provided no evidence to back that up. Just more lies.
Three months later, Austria, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States are the only countries of the original group which are withholding funding for the UNRWA. The U.S. stand is particularly unfathomable, considering that its own intelligence services have already publicly reported in February that they had “low confidence” in the accuracy of Israel’s accusations.
Unless the lost funding is restored, the UNRWA is scheduled to run out of money just months from now.
Yesterday an independent review of Israel’s claims against the UNRWA, commissioned by but independent of the United Nations itself, declared it had found no proof substantiating Israel’s claims against the agency.
That review was directed by Catherine Colonna, a former Foreign Minister of France, and carried out with the support of three Nordic research institutes. The three Nordic agencies involved in the detailed examination of UNRWA’s people were the Norwegian Chr Michelsen Institute, the Swedish Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, and the Danish Institute for Human Rights.
The report included an exhaustive examination of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency’s approach to screening applicants for the group, methods for training staff, chain of command and management structure, as well as its code of ethics and how adherence to that code is monitored, while also looking directly at the claims Israel made about the agency.
“Throughout the nine-week review, the Group extensively analyzed the mechanisms and procedures currently in place within UNRWA to ensure neutrality and address potential breaches,” the report explained in outlining all it had done to ensure the accuracy and integrity of its investigation.
“The Group’s members conducted field visits to UNRWA headquarters and facilities in Amman, Jerusalem and the West Bank, engaging with various stakeholders including UNRWA officials, donor Member States, host countries, Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Egypt, UN agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs),” it continued. “The Group conducted meetings and interviews with more than 200 people, including with UNRWA staff in Gaza. Direct contacts were made with 47 countries and organizations.”
After extensive reviews, Colonna and the group concluded that “UNRWA has established a significant number of mechanisms and procedures to ensure compliance with the humanitarian 4 principles, with emphasis on the principle of neutrality, and that it possesses a more developed approach to neutrality than other similar UN or NGO entities.”
The investigative report does point out that there are several areas within how UNRWA is operated which should receive quick attention to assist it in the proper delivery of its services and to ensure adherence with its chartered requirement to always remain neutral. Among those are how the agency engages with donors, how its management and oversight functions work, training on neutrality despite the brutal conditions UNRWA employees often must work within because of Israel’s actions, and arranging stronger linkages between it and other UN agencies. In naming these items, however, the report said that making improvements in these areas “are designed to help UNRWA face the neutrality challenges stemming from the operational, political and security environment in which it operates”, rather than because of any substantial failure in its approaches such as Israel alleged.
As to whether Israel had ever backed up its many allegations either in private or public, the report was also damningly clear.
“On the basis of the March 2024 list, which contained Palestinian ID numbers, Israel made public claims that a significant number of UNRWA employees are members of terrorist organizations,” it said. “However, Israel has yet to provide supporting evidence of this.”
The report also goes on to call the work of the UNRWA “indispensable”, adding that the agency “remains pivotal in providing life-saving humanitarian aid and essential social services, particularly in health and education, to Palestinian refugees in Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the West Bank.”
In a press conference about the report yesterday, Catherine Colonna said not only that they found nothing to substantiate Israel’s claims against the agency, but that Israel also never submitted any proof of its own.
And as to whether the world should trust UNRWA as it carries out its work, Colonna called the agency “indispensable and irreplaceable”.
“As we speak, at this critical time, UNRWA has a vital role in the humanitarian response in Gaza,” she continued.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres issued a statement shortly after the report came out that he had accepted the conclusions and recommendations in the report. He also offered a broad appeal “to all stakeholders to actively support UNRWA, as it is a lifeline for Palestine refugees in the region."
Israel has currently rejected the report in its entirety, saying those investigated its claims did not properly investigate the situation. It continues to stick to its latest position on the matter that over 2,135 UNRWA workers belong to either Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and that, as it said recently, “one-fifth of UNRWA school administrators are Hamas members.”
The report’s conclusions may open some further money for the agency, but with starvation running rampant in Gaza already it may come too late to help anyone. Also, with Israel having declared just weeks ago it was not allowing any UNRWA humanitarian aid into central or northern Gaza, and with the mass invasion of Rafah expected to begin any day, it is unlikely even a fully funded UNRWA could make a difference now.
The genocide will continue as the rest of the world watches on and many nations actively support it.