Wednesday, February 07, 2024

'Scandal': Israeli Dossier 'Provides No Evidence' for Claims Against UNRWA Staff

"People in Gaza are starving, and because of spurious allegations made in a dodgy dossier, they will experience worse hunger."



Palestinians gather for a demonstration in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on January 30, 2024.

(Photo: AFP via Getty Images)

JAKE JOHNSON
Feb 06, 2024

An Israeli dossier that more than a dozen countries have cited to justify cutting off funding to the United Nations' Palestinian refugee agency "provides no evidence" that a small number of the key U.N. aid body's employees were involved in the October 7 Hamas-led attack, according to an investigation released Monday by the British outlet Channel 4.

The dossier merely states that "from intelligence information, documents, and identity cards seized during the course of the fighting, it is now possible to flag around 190 Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist operatives who serve as UNRWA employees."

"More than 10 UNRWA staffers took part in the events of [October 7]," reads the six-page dossier, which Israel provided to UNRWA donor countries—including the agency's top contributor, the United States—shortly after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) handed down an interim decision ordering Israel to take concrete steps to prevent genocide in the Gaza Strip.

The ICJ instructed the Israeli government to ensure that sufficient humanitarian assistance flows to desperate and starving Gazans, but Israel's allegations against UNRWA employees led at least 16 countries to suspend funding for the agency, the most critical aid body operating in the Palestinian enclave. Around a million displaced Gazans are currently sheltering at facilities run by UNRWA, which has 13,000 employees across the strip.

The UNRWA is reportedly set to lose $65 million by the end of February as donors' funding cuts take effect, imperiling the agency's operations in Gaza and across the Middle East.


Channel 4 noted Monday that all 13,000 of UNRWA's Gaza employees' names "have been checked against the U.N. terrorism list and, as recently as last May, were vetted and approved by Israel."

The UNRWA quickly fired nine of the employees named by Israel. On Monday, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres established "an independent review group to assess whether the agency is doing everything within its power to ensure neutrality and to respond to allegations of serious breaches when they are made."



The Daily Beast also obtained a copy of the Israeli dossier and—similar to Channel 4—reported Tuesday that it "includes little evidence to back up" Israel's allegations against UNRWA employees.

Ashish Prashar, a spokesperson for Gaza Voices, said in response to the new reporting that "we now know that the document used to suspend funding to UNRWA 'provides no evidence.'"

"This is the latest campaign in a decades-long attack on UNRWA by Israel and a subset of the broader campaign to eliminate the Palestinian refugee issue," said Prashar. "People in Gaza are starving, and because of spurious allegations made in a dodgy dossier, they will experience worse hunger. This scandal should lead to resignations from officials in the U.S., UK, Germany, and elsewhere who all suspended funding to a besieged people experiencing a genocide as a result of a baseless accusation by the génocidaires themselves."

"The fact that the U.S., U.K., and several other Western governments instantly attacked UNRWA on the orders of a genocidal foreign government (based on bogus claims) should make you very worried about your own democracy."

Jeremy Scahill, a senior correspondent at The Intercept's criticized the Biden administration and The Wall Street Journal for characterizing the dossier as "some smoking gun."

During a press conference last week, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called the allegations in the dossier "highly, highly credible."

The same day as Blinken's remarks, the Journalran a story stating that "around 10%" of UNRWA's Gaza employees have ties to Islamist militant groups," pointing to an "intelligence dossier."

But questions about the reliability of the purported intelligence cited in the Israeli dossier have been swirling since the details of its contents began to trickle out in the press late last month. Citing one unnamed senior Israeli official, Axiosreported that "the intelligence is a result of interrogations of militants who were arrested during the Oct. 7 attack."

Israeli forces have repeatedly been accused by U.N. experts and human rights groups of using torture to extract forced confessions from Palestinian detainees.

"The fact that the U.S., U.K., and several other Western governments instantly attacked UNRWA on the orders of a genocidal foreign government (based on bogus claims) should make you very worried about your own democracy," Craig Mokhiber, a former U.N. official who resigned over the global institution's failure to stop Israel's assault on Gaza, wrote Tuesday.


Senate Deal Would Block All Funding to UNRWA as Gazans Starve

"It bars all funding in the pipeline," said one policy expert. "I don't see any other way to read it."



Displaced people prepare food in a clay oven in Rafah, Gaza on December 18, 2023.

(Photo: Abed Zagout/Anadolu via Getty Images)


JULIA CONLEY
Feb 05, 2024

As the United Nations warned Monday that at least a quarter of civilians in Gaza are suffering from "catastrophic" food insecurity and the collapse of the healthcare system is causing disease to spread, the U.S. Senate doubled down on cutting funding for the U.N.'s top humanitarian agency serving Palestinians by including in a bipartisan package a provision that would block aid for the body.

The proposed $118 billion Emergency National Security Supplemental Appropriations Act, chiefly negotiated by Sens. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.), and James Lankford (R-Okla.) includes $14.1 billion for Israel, which has killed at least 27,468 Palestinians in Gaza and at least 360 in the West Bank since beginning its assault on the occupied territories in October.

But a provision notes that none of the $10 billion in humanitarian assistance for Palestinians and Ukrainians "may be made available for a contribution, grant, or other payment" to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

Just after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) said in an interim ruling late last month that South Africa's claim that Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza is "plausible," Israel announced it had discovered that 12 of the agency's 13,000 employees in Palestine had been involved in the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7.

Israeli officials did not provide evidence confirming their allegations, but the announcement was followed by a swift suspension of UNRWA funding by countries including the United States, Canada, Finland, and the United Kingdom—imperiling the donor-supported agency's ability to continue providing shelter, food, sanitation, and other basic services to more than 1 million Palestinians who are sheltering in its facilities in Gaza.

Now, said Lara Friedman, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, the proposed package "bars all funding in the pipeline" to UNRWA. "I don't see any other way to read it."

HuffPost reporter Akbar Shahid Ahmed noted that the provision's inclusion in the bill is a "huge concession from Democrats," several of whom proposed amendments to reaffirm the United States' commitment to a two-state solution; to demand that any countries receiving aid through the supplemental package follow "U.S. law, international humanitarian law, and the law of armed conflict"; and to maintain congressional oversight of military aid. None of the amendments were included in the final text.




"Hard-right UNRWA critics are already celebrating this as a big win," said Ahmed.




U.S. State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel confirmed in a briefing that the package in its current form would eliminate U.S. aid to UNRWA and said the government would redirect the agency's aid to other humanitarian bodies including the United Nations Children's Fund and the World Food Program—both of which have condemned Israel's U.S.-backed assault, demanded a cease-fire, and warned that ending funding for UNRWA will "have catastrophic consequences for the people of Gaza" and leave a gap that "no other entity has the capacity" to fill.



Patel told reporters that because the Biden White House is "an administration that follows the law," it would abide by the legislation's ban on UNRWA funding if passed, but sidestepped a question about evidence of Israel's human rights violations—and whether they may ever push the U.S. to stop funding the Israeli military.



Despite the ICJ's finding last month, the U.S. has continued to say it will not change its policies related to Israel.

House Republicans on Monday indicated that they would not pass the Senate's current version of the package, objecting to U.S.-Mexico border funding provisions in the text.

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