The United Nations appointed former French foreign minister Catherine Colonna to lead the UNRWA review of UNRWA’s ability to ensure neutrality and respond to allegations of breaches in February after Israel accused 12 UNRWA staff took part in the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks which triggered the Gaza war.
A separate investigation by internal U.N. investigators is looking into the Israeli allegations against the 12 UNRWA staff. The U.N. said last week that the U.N. Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) has had “a number of meetings and cooperation from the Israeli authorities on this.”
UNRWA provides education, health and aid to millions of Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. The review said UNRWA shares staff lists annually with the Palestinian Authority, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria.
The review said Israel had not raised any concerns with UNRWA, based on those staff lists, since 2011. Then in March 2024, “Israel made public claims that a significant number of UNRWA employees are members of terrorist organizations.”
“However, Israel has yet to provide supporting evidence of this,” the review said.
Israeli tortured confessions from UNRWA
Israel stepped up its accusations in March, saying over 450 UNRWA staff were military operatives in Gaza terrorist groups. UNRWA employs 32,000 people across its area of operations, 13,000 of them in Gaza.
On Monday, Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesperson Oren Marmorstein accused more than 2,135 UNRWA workers of being members of Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad. He said the Colonna review of UNRWA was insufficient and an “effort to avoid the problem and not address it head on.”
“The Colonna report ignores the severity of the problem, and offers cosmetic solutions that do not deal with the enormous scope of Hamas’ infiltration of UNRWA,” he said, adding that Israel calls on donors not to give money to UNRWA in Gaza and instead to fund other humanitarian organizations in the enclave.
It is possible, that the Israeli are systematically lying and just trying to halt the aid delivery, furthermore worsening the Palestinian suffering and famine, using it as yet another horrendous weapon in this war that is already in its seventh month. Israelis have never had too much respect against the United Nations and have also targeted the UN peacekeeping UNIFIL forces on the Blue Line on several occasions.
Earlier last month reports surfaced saying Israelis have tortured the confessions out of the UNRWA workers, which naturally can’t be thought as reliable intel, as people say anything to make it stop. According to human rights organisations, waterboarding is torture, hence it is safe to say that Israeli forces have tortured the UN staff.
 are members of terrorist groups.){kind=link}