“We will come with soldiers you cannot face!” And we will drive you away!' When Professor Sara Al Dirawi proudly posted a video of the October 7 massacres and commented on them with little hearts and a surah from the Koran, no one was too surprised: like her, a teacher at UNRWA schools in Gaza, they didn't think You so many of his colleagues?
No comment, not even from Philippe Lazzarini, the Swiss who has headed the UN refugee agency for four years. But yes: why talk about this other story, the former Israeli hostage who was held captive without food or medicine right in the house of an Unrwa teacher? Yesterday, however, Commissioner Lazzarini could not remain silent. Because Israel has proven what it has long claimed: there was “direct” involvement of at least twelve UN employees on October 7th.
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And why the White House, which pays UNRWA $343 million annually, decided to suspend funding. “These are shocking allegations,” Lazzarini admitted. I promise to fire this dozen immediately. To initiate an internal investigation. And to even prosecute “any employee involved in terrorist attacks.”
13,000 Palestinians work there
Better now than never. It has been said for 112 days, it has been suspected for many years: as big as its name and as old as the Palestinian question – it was born in 1949, even a year before the UNHCR, the UN agency for children. Refugees from all over the world – the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) is the only one that caters to a single population and has very few international staff in the Gaza Strip.
13,000 Palestinians work in its 284 schools, its pharmacies and its refugee camps: people who, Israelis say, understand Hamas. There was often talk of children being trained to be “martyrs” and bent on killing Jews. After the Islamic movement, UNRWA is the largest operation in Gaza and it is difficult to stay away from this regime, especially in recent months when 152 employees were killed in Israeli bombings. This time, however, there is something else: UN Secretary-General António Guterres says he is “horrified”. European Foreign Minister Josep Borrell is “extremely concerned”. And the other financiers want to see clearly – from Germany (202 million euros) to the EU (114) to Italy itself with its 18 million – determined to review the sum of over a billion that the international community pays to UNRWA and ends up partly in the pockets of Hamas.
A long fuse
The dossier presented by Israel would be extensive. Dozens of rockets and weapons found in UNRWA buildings. Men of the Nukhba special forces, the most ferocious, who are also employees of the Glass Palace. The same Hamas economy minister, Jawad Abu Shamala, who taught at a UN school in Khan Younis before his death. Israel's antipathy towards UNRWA has a long fuse: an agency – denounces Prime Minister Netanyahu – that, with 30,000 employees, supports 5.9 million Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, while the entire UNHCR supports around 108 million refugees around the clock helps world and employs 20 thousand.
This question calls into question the prime minister himself, who is accused by the far right of always paying for UNRWA spending “with Israelis’ taxes” and is now struggling to abandon the UN agency. “She is the only one who knows how to distribute water, food and medicine,” says a government source: “She is solving a problem for us.” And perhaps it was the first time in its history that it worked well.”