UN fires 9 UNRWA staff for possible involvement in Oct. 7 attack on Israel
The United Nations said Monday it has fired additional staff members from its agency for Palestinian refugees after an internal investigation found they may have been involved in the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack against Israel.
The U.N. secretary-general’s office announced the move in a brief statement to journalists. Farhan Haq, deputy spokesperson for the secretary-general, did not elaborate on the UNRWA staffers’ likely role in the attack or on the evidence that prompted its decision.
UNRWA previously fired 12 staffers and put seven staffers on administrative leave without pay over the claims. The group of nine staffers the U.N. announced it had fired Monday includes some from each group, said Juliette Touma, communications director for UNRWA.
The U.N. did not clarify how many have now been fired from the agency in total.
The U.N.’s internal watchdog has been investigating the agency since Israel in January accused 12 UNRWA staffers of being involved in the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, in which militants killed 1,200 people and abducted some 250 others.
Israel’s allegations initially led top donor countries to suspend their funding for UNRWA. That caused a cash crunch of about $450 million dollars. Since then, all donor countries except for the US have decided to resume funding.
The U.N. watchdog charged with investigating UNRWA, called the Office of Internal Oversight Services, said it drew on evidence provided by Israel in discussions with Israeli authorities. It said it could not independently corroborate that evidence since it did not have direct access to it. The investigators also reviewed internal UNRWA information, including staff records, email and other communications data.
It said it found sufficient evidence pointing to nine employees’ potential involvement in the Oct. 7 attack.
“I have decided that in the case of these remaining nine staff members, they cannot work for UNRWA,” the agency’s head Philippe Lazzarini said in a statement.
“The agency’s priority is to continue lifesaving and critical services for Palestine refugees in Gaza and across the region, especially in the face of the ongoing war, the instability and risk of regional escalation,” said Lazzarini, who also said he condemned the Oct. 7 attack.
In nine other cases, the evidence was insufficient, and in one other case there was no evidence pointing to involvement.
UNRWA has been the main agency distributing aid to Palestinians in Gaza during the 10-month old war there, which Gaza Health officials say has killed over 39,600 people and unleashed a mass humanitarian catastrophe.
Hamas are prolific liars; you cannot believe their numbers. They might be more believable if they showed us 40,000 bodies or graves, but we have seen very few.
Israel has long accused UNRWA of collaborating with Hamas and turning a blind eye to the militant group’s activities. Throughout the war, it has released images of tunnels built next to UNRWA facilities. During the war, the feud has escalated, with far-right protests setting portions of the agency’s facility in Jerusalem ablaze and calling for the agency’s shutdown.
UNRWA denies collaborating with Hamas. The agency says that more than 200 UNRWA staffers have been killed, and 190 of the agency’s installations have been damaged during the war — including U.N.-run schools that have been turned into shelters for displaced Palestinians.
—AP reporter Jade Lozada contributed reporting from the United Nations
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EU and World Bank Increase Their Support For
‘Palestinian’ Terrorism
Both the EU and the World Bank have announced that they are now going to deliver much larger infusions of cash to the Palestinian Authority than ever before, despite that body’s continuing support for its “Pay-For-Slay” program, that provides generous monthly stipends to imprisoned terrorists, as well as to the families of terrorists who were killed while engaged in their terror attacks. In this way, “Pay-For-Slay” both rewards terrorists and helps to recruit new terrorists who may want to improve the financial wellbeing of their families. This hasn’t dissuaded the EU or the World Bank from sending more money to the PA. More on this moral travesty can be found here:
Patrons of Pay-for Slay: EU and World Bank are accessories to terror funding
by Itamar Marcus and Ephraim D. Tepler, Palestinian Media Watch, July 25, 2024:
The EU and the World Bank continue to delude themselves into thinking that their financial aid to the Palestinian Authority is not used to fund terrorism. Palestinian Media Watch suggests that the ethical test of eligibility for funding should not be about where the money goes but about who the recipient is.
PMW has been reporting continually about the PA’s dire financial situation, caused exclusively by PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ insistence that even if the PA has only one penny left, it will continue to pay prisoners and Martyrs. A commentator on PA TV recently explained just how the PA places itself in this predicament:
Financial commentator Thabet Abu Al-Rous: “Despite the Israeli restrictions, the Palestinian side and the Palestinian [PA] government will pay the money that the families of the prisoners and the Martyrs deserve… The payments to the families of the prisoners and Martyrs total 52 million shekels every month. The PA is paying this obligation, while Israel is deducting this, so it is as if this amount was deducted from the PA twice.”
[Official PA TV, June 29, 2024]
52 million shekels is equivalent to about $14 million a month.
Under Mahmoud Abbas, despite its desperate financial condition, the PA is dead set on continuing its “Pay-For-Slay” program, which now amounts to $280 million a year being transferred to imprisoned terrorists or to the families of terrorist “martyrs.”
Fortunately for the PA, however, it can rely on the World Bank and EU to come to its rescue. At the beginning of July, the World Bank announced that it would be granting the PA as much as $300 million, up from its usual annual grant of $70 million.
PA Prime Minister Muhammad Mustafa: “The World Bank Board of Directors decided a few days ago to increase the annual grant that it provides to the State of Palestine from approximately $70 million to $300 million per year. This is an unprecedented sum in the history of Palestine’s relations with the World Bank.”
[Official PA TV News, July 3, 2024]
New EU grant to the Palestinian Authority
On July 19, 2024, the EU announced that it would be granting the PA a total of 400 million euros after it announced in May that it had donated 25 million euros in a second tranche of assistance meant for the salaries and pensions of PA civil servants.
“The government announced today that after months of efforts, the European Commission has approved an emergency financial assistance package totaling €400 million. This aid will be disbursed in grants and loans in three installments over the coming months for various purposes aimed at mitigating the financial and economic crisis.”
[WAFA, official PA news agency, English edition, July 19, 2024]…
The total, then, that the World Bank and the EU will be giving to the PA amounts to $833 million. The PA is being rewarded, but for what? Mahmoud Abbas has refused to denounce the Hamas atrocities carried out on October 7, and after the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, he deplored his assassination and praised this arch-terrorist. Yet the Western world, and especially the EU and the World Bank, have convinced themselves that Abbas is a “moderate” and the PA deserves to be financially rescued from his corruption and mismanagement by sending still more funds to him.
The huge sums — the World Bank alone is increasing the sums it is giving the PA from $70 million to $300 million — will be used, either directly, or indirectly, to provide the PA with the wherewithal to continue its “Pay-For-Slay” program. Directly, if the money is received and $280 million of it is credited to the PA’s “Pay-For-Slay” account. Indirectly, if that money is spent on any number of things — road work, bureaucrats’ salaries and pensions, planting the “Mahmoud Abbas Rose Garden” in Ramallah— thus freeing up the amounts that were previously earmarked to pay for those undertakings, and instead applying them to the “Pay-For-Slay” program for imprisoned terrorists and the families of “martyrs.” The EU and the World Bank are by their latest allocations of funds to the PA now among the Western world’s most generous supporters of terrorist murderers. Quite an achievement.
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