At least 12 employees of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) were involved in the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, and approximately 10% of employees in Gaza have ties to the militants. The Wall Street Journal writes about this with reference to US intelligence, UNN reports.
Details
According to an intelligence dossier provided by the United States, six employees of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) were directly involved in the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel. Two helped kidnap Israelis. Two others were tracked to the locations where dozens of Israeli civilians were shot and killed. Others coordinated the logistics of the attack, including the purchase of weapons. Of the 12 UNRWA staff members involved in the attacks, seven were primary or secondary school teachers.
In particular, it mentions an Arabic teacher from UNRWA who, according to the reports, became a Hamas commander and participated in a terrorist attack on Kibbutz Be'eri, which resulted in 97 people being killed and almost 26 people being kidnapped and taken hostage in Gaza.
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In total, intelligence estimates suggest that approximately 1,200 of UNRWA's 12,000 employees in the Gaza Strip have ties to Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad. And about half have close relatives who belong to Islamist militant groups.
The report also found that 23% of UNRWA's male staff were affiliated with Hamas, which is higher than among adult men in the Gaza Strip, where an average of 15% of men have such ties. This indicates that the agency is more politicized than the general population.
The information in the intelligence reports was based on radio intercepts, mobile phone geolocation data, interrogations of captured militants, and documents found on dead militants. After the data was shared with UN officials, decisions were made to suspend UNRWA funding.
A representative of the organization refused to comment to journalists, saying that the agency was undergoing an internal UN investigation.