Current and former UNRWA officials say that the agency has long taken seriously and investigated accusations of infiltration by Hamas, which seized power in Gaza in 2007. The agency has variously responded to tips from Israel, the United States and its own networks. It was the kind of challenge, they said, that all aid groups operating in hostile environments faced, not unique to UNRWA, which has worked in the enclave for decades.
Rather than addressing such issues in a systematic process, they dealt with them in a piecemeal way mostly in private, working with officials at the United Nations in New York. Over the years, several people who had proven Hamas links were fired or left the agency, including after the 2014 investigation, current and former officials said.
Israel has long made a broader accusation: UNRWA didn’t go far enough to root out Hamas and was unwilling to clean up systematically. It has said UNRWA is a completely compromised organization that is too weak to protect against infiltration and needs to be replaced by a more neutral aid group.
. . .
UNRWA’s leaders say the agency strives to ensure its 13,000 employees in Gaza uphold standards of neutrality, regularly training its staff to stay above politics and investigating those who do not. But they add that it is impossible for UNRWA — like any large organization that draws its staff from a cross-section of society — to track the private political allegiances of all its employees.
Oh look, the New York Times uncritically reporting IDF claims as fact, despite their long history of lying.
Yeah. Remember how everyone would instantly start yapping about how “the hamas led ministry of health” is giving the numbers, and thereby implying we shouldn’t believe them?
Why aren’t these same people and journalists doing the same with the IDF?
This is the best summary I could come up with:
When the United Nations launched an investigation a decade ago into whether a handful of its employees in Gaza were members of Hamas, it was not long before a senior U.N. legal officer in the territory started receiving death threats.
Previously unreported episodes like this one, from October 2014, form part of the back story to the current crisis embroiling UNRWA, the U.N. relief group in Gaza now sheltering more than half of the enclave’s population.
UNRWA’s leaders say the agency strives to ensure its 13,000 employees in Gaza uphold standards of neutrality, regularly training its staff to stay above politics and investigating those who do not.
After passing under a major road, the tunnel eventually led to a subterranean communications hub, full of servers and computer hardware, that lay directly beneath UNRWA’s sprawling headquarters in the territory.
“You have to be very naïve to think that the UNRWA personnel did not know what was happening under their feet,” not least because the construction and maintenance of the tunnel would have required aboveground assistance, said Maj. Nir Dinar, a spokesman for the Israeli military who accompanied the journalists.
Israel’s ability to extend its invasion is partly reliant on a functional and independent aid operation for Gazan civilians, according to four officials involved in Israeli military planning.
The original article contains 1,694 words, the summary contains 216 words. Saved 87%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
So UNWRA are admitting they have issues with Hamas infiltration?
Just because I happen to have it handy, here’s the video. https://twitter.com/DrEliDavid/status/1756369328184734024?s=19
Multiple cuts to the video, no verification it is a UNRWA building, nothing linking the tunnel to the UN building is shown. Just talk
Do better, don’t swallow propaganda willfully
Got a better to too source than crazy covid skeptic and musk lover?
*or anyone else not bragging about being a current top Twitter person *
You can believe the NY Times or not
Just curious why you’d use that tweet?
Hmmmmmm. Well, there were a bunch of them and I choose randomly
Giving Hamas electricity is fighting them?
To those downvoting my comment, try to spin an explanation on how you’re not defending Hamas but supporting the Palestinian civilians.
UNRWA staff left the facility on October 12th. [checks calendar] huh, that’s quite some time ago. And the facility was inspected in September. So if the evidence is valid, either UNRWA waited for the inspection, then quickly set up the infrastructure to provide Hamas with electricity before evacuating a month later, OR something happened in the four months since they left that they did not have control over.
Isn’t the second one more likely? And this is all if the power supply really connects to the tunnels in the way the IDF claims (not confirmed).
So if UNRWA had nothing to do with it, this is a lie designed to smear the main humanitarian organization in Gaza ie to reduce the ability of the Palestinian civilians to get basic supplies for their survival. That’s how it’s supporting civilians
