The UNRWA case is back in the spotlight. More than seven months after the first Israeli accusations that employees of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees were involved in the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023, the UN office in charge of the investigation has issued its conclusions: Nine employees "may have been involved" in the autumn massacre in Israel, Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, reported on Monday, August 5.
Nineteen of the organization's 13,000 or so employees in the Gaza Strip were implicated. The evidence obtained "indicated that [nine] UNRWA staff members may have been involved in the 7 October attacks," explained Haq, adding that they had been fired. In nine other cases, however, there was no evidence to support the suspicions. One employee had already been cleared in April and reinstated.
These long-awaited conclusions are still conditional, as the investigators from the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) did not have direct access to the evidence. "Since information used by Israeli officials to support the allegations have remained in Israeli custody, OIOS was not able to independently authenticate most of the information provided to it," reported Haq. No details were given on the content of the accusations. "Beyond that, we will need to evaluate what further steps are needed in order to fully corroborate and evaluate the situation," Haq said.
Guterres commissioned the investigation after serious allegations against 12 UNRWA employees were made public in January. They caused an international storm, although the UN agency immediately took its distance with the employees still alive – two were killed – who were implicated. Seven new cases were added in March and April.
Agency work hampered
The OIOS team held talks in Israel with the authorities from March onwards – after Benjamin Netanyahu's government had initially refused to provide any evidence to the UN. It also conducted remote contacts with incriminated employees in Gaza, and visited Jordan to obtain information from UNRWA. Its Commissioner General, Philippe Lazzarini, acknowledged the results of the investigation on Monday. "I have decided that in the case of these remaining nine staff members, they cannot work for UNRWA," he stressed in a press release.
Reactions were immediate in Israel. Army spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Nadav Shoshani wrote on X: "A UN investigation (yes, UN as in the first two letters of UNRWA) has concluded that 9 of your workers might have taken part in the raping, killing and slaughtering of Israelis and Israeli communities during the Oct. 7 massacre. Your 'relief' agency has officially stooped to a new level of low, and it is time that the world sees your true face."
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