Hamas henchmen? – The questionable role of UN aid workers in the Middle East

Participated in the kidnapping of an Israeli woman, distributed ammunition, participated in a kibbutz massacre that left 97 dead: more and more details are emerging about the alleged involvement of UNRWA employees in Hamas’s terrorist attack on Israel, as recently reported by the New York Times.

The suspect worked as a teacher
It reviewed an Israeli dossier containing allegations against twelve people who worked as teachers or in other positions at UNRWA schools on October 7. Ten of the twelve suspects are members of the Islamist terrorist organization Hamas. They are accused of aiding Hamas in the October 7 attacks or supporting Hamas in the days that followed. The dossier is available to the American government, which does not confirm the allegations but classifies them as credible, the American newspaper writes.

The information was collected by Israeli intelligence, which tracked the movements of six UNRWA employees within Israel using their phones on October 7. Others had telephone conversations in which they discussed their involvement in the Hamas attack monitored. One person was asked by text message to bring rocket-propelled grenades stored in his home.

Hamas terror cheered in the group chat
These are far from the first allegations against UNRWA workers to have sparked outrage. Recently, the Geneva-based NGO ‘UN Watch’ revealed that 30 employees of the UN aid agencies cheered the terrorist attack, expressed support for Hamas or made anti-Semitic comments in a Telegram group. The NGO published an extensive dossier in mid-January with detailed information about the workers, including their jobs – often teachers – and their UNRWA contract number.

Even before that, there had been repeated reports showing how the boundaries between Hamas and UNRWA, which has 13,000 staff in the Gaza Strip, were blurring. The activities of the aid organization with the cumbersome full name United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East have also been criticized for years.

Refugee status is hereditary
Established in 1949, UNRWA was intended to care for people displaced or fled during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. At the time there were 750,000 Palestinian refugees, but that number has now grown to almost six million. The descendants of those who fled Palestine and even adopted people are also listed as refugees by UNRWA.

The fact that refugee status is inherited is unique in the world. Just as the Palestinians are the only ethnic group to have their own refugee agency, while everyone else is taken care of by the UNHCR. In general, statelessness must be reduced, as laid down in a UN treaty that came into force in 1975. Refugees must therefore regain legal residence status as soon as possible. On the other hand, UNRWA strengthens refugee status.

The aid organization with a total of around 30,000 employees, most of them Palestinians themselves, manages so-called refugee camps in the Palestinian territories, but also in Jordan and Lebanon, which have existed for decades and are now residential areas with permanent homes. In addition, UNRWA is active in areas that go far beyond that of a refugee aid organization. It has taken on traditional government tasks such as education, health care, urban planning and social services.

Controversial right of return
The fact that more than seventy years after the Arab-Israeli war, the displaced people and their descendants are still considered refugees is particularly explosive given the controversial right of return demanded by the Palestinians.

The State of Israel sees its existence threatened by the ‘return’ of almost six million people and therefore rejects a right of return. Israel and its Western allies, especially the US, therefore accuse UNRWA of preventing a solution to the refugee problem.