United Nations on Monday said that it had fired nine employees of UNRWA, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, who “may have been involved” in the October 7 terror attacks on Israel.
Further it exonerated 10 other UN staffers in the same matter saying, “In one case, no evidence was obtained by OIOS to support the allegations of the staff member’s involvement, while in nine other cases, the evidence obtained by OIOS was insufficient to support the staff member’s involvement.”
OIOS stands for the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services and is the UN’s internal watchdog. OIOS has been investigating UNRWA after Israel made shocking allegations in January 2024, saying UN staff members were involved in grave crimes of terrorism and participated in the October 7, 2023 attacks by Hamas.
Israel had accused 12 UNRWA staffers of being involved in the October 7 attacks, in which 1,200 people were killed and some 250 others were abducted and taken into Gaza by militants.
The UN Secretary-General’s deputy spokesperson, Farhan Haq made the announcement of the 9 UNRWA staffers firing to the press, but did not elaborate on their role in the attack or on the evidence that prompted this decision.
UNRWA had previously fired 12 staffers and put 7 additional staffers on administrative leave without pay over Israel’s claims. According to Juliette Touma, Communications Director for UNRWA, the 9 staffers the UN announced it had fired on Monday included some from amongst these earlier 19 individuals. It is not yet clear how many total employees the UN has fired, since UN investigations into UNRWA began.
Speaking after OIOS completed its investigation and made its findings, UN deputy spokesperson Farhan Haq said “We have sufficient information in order to take the actions that we’re taking – which is to say, the termination of these nine individuals.”
All the nine individuals who were fired were men, Haq added.
While he did not give much details on the investigation itself, he said “For us, any participation in the attacks is a tremendous betrayal of the sort of work that we are supposed to be doing on behalf of the Palestinian people.”
He also clarified that “OIOS was not able to independently authenticate most of the information provided to it that was in the hands of the Israeli authorities.”
In response to the UN announcement, Israel’s military said UNRWA had hit a “new level of low”.
“Your ‘relief’ agency has officially stooped to a new level of low, and it is time that the world sees your true face,” Lieutenant-Colonel Nadav Shoshani, the military’s international spokesperson, posted on X.
Oren Marmorstein, the spokesperson for Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, also wrote on X following the announcement saying that Israel was again calling for donor countries to suspend funding “as the funds may go to terrorist elements.”
“UNRWA is part of the problem and not part of the solution, and anyone who seeks the best interests of Israel, the Gaza Strip and the region should act to replace UNWRA’s activities with other agencies,” he wrote.
UNRWA has steadfastly denied collaborating with Hamas. The agency says that more than 200 UNRWA staffers have been killed, and 190 of the agency’s installations have been damaged during the 10 month long war — including UN run schools that have been turned into shelters for displaced Palestinians.
UNRWA employs 32,000 people across the Middle East region, in its areas of operations, with 13,000 of them being staff members in Gaza.
It is the main UN agency distributing aid to Palestinians in Gaza during the war, which Gaza’s Health Ministry (that is run by Hamas) says has killed over 39,600 people and unleashed a mass humanitarian catastrophe.
Following the Israel’s unprecedented allegations on UNRWA, twelve member states including top donor the United States, suspended funding to the UN agency causing a cash crunch of about $450 million dollars. Since then, all donor countries except for the US have resumed funding.
Since the war began in October 2023, an overwhelming majority of UN member states have called on Israel to stop the war, with the International Court of Justice in The Hague, the UN’s top judicial organ, indicating that sufficient evidence exists that a genocide is taking place in the region.
Separately the International Criminal Court, also situated in The Hague is in the process of issuing arrest warrants for top Israeli Leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as well as for the Hamas Leadership in what the ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan has categorised as ‘crimes against humanity.’
