Israel ‘yet to provide evidence’ of UNRWA staff terrorist links, independent report says – POLITICO

The report, commissioned by the UN and led by former French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna, reveals that UNRWA regularly shares lists of its employees with Israel for monitoring purposes. He also noted that since 2011, the Israeli government has not expressed any concerns regarding UNRWA personnel based on these lists.

“All beneficiaries, contractors, suppliers, non-state donors or any other person or organization affiliated with UNRWA are reviewed twice a year by the agency using the UN sanctions list,” the report said.

UNRWA has established “a significant number of policies, mechanisms and procedures” to ensure both neutrality and “prompt and adequate responses to allegations,” the report said.

After Israel made allegations in January that the organization’s personnel were involved in the October 7 Hamas attack, UNRWA immediately identified 12 workers involved and terminated the contracts of ten of them. them, while two others were confirmed dead.

In February, Israeli officials also claimed to have discovered a network of tunnels several hundred meters long that ran partly beneath the UNRWA headquarters in Gaza, calling it evidence of the link between Hamas and the humanitarian agency .

After the report was released, the Israeli Foreign Ministry said, without providing evidence, that Hamas’s penetration of the UN agency is so deep that “it is impossible to say where UNRWA ends and where begins Hamas,” calling it “a poisonous tree whose roots are Hamas.” »