Palestinian UN agency must improve neutrality – report
By Imogen Foulkes
A UN report into the Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA has concluded it must do more to improve its neutrality, staff vetting and transparency.
But the independent review also said that Israel had failed to back up a claim that many of the agency’s staff belonged to terror groups.
Some of UNRWA’s staff were accused by Israel of involvement in the 7 October attacks and of being Hamas members.
This led several countries to halt funding to the humanitarian agency.
The new report says Israel has not yet provided “supporting evidence” for its allegations.
However it adds that the agency’s monitoring processes need to improve, and that neutrality-related issues persist despite the fact that the organisation has a “robust framework”.
The Israeli authorities have rejected the findings, claiming the report ignores the severity of the problem. They say the problem with the agency is not “that of a few bad apples: it is a rotten and poisonous tree whose roots are Hamas”.
Israel initially alleged that 12 UNRWA staff took part in the Hamas attacks on southern Israel, which saw 1,200 people killed and about 250 taken hostage.
