Israel says it has compiled a list of employees of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) who are also reportedly active within the Palestinian Islamist Hamas.
Israel has identified 108 UNRWA workers who are affected and presented a list of them to the UNRWA chief Filip Lazzarinithe Israeli embassy in Berlin announced.
According to the embassy, only a small number of the hundreds of UNRWA workers are employed by Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). This information cannot be independently verified.
An Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman said the list has also been submitted to UN Secretary-General António Guterres, but has not yet been published by Israel.
UNRWA confirmed upon request that it had “received a letter from the Israeli government containing allegations against employees working in the Gaza Strip.”
The letter included a list of about 100 people who were allegedly members of Hamas’s military wing, the agency said. “UNRWA takes these allegations seriously,” it added.
It said it had responded to the letter and asked for information and cooperation. UNRWA said it had no resources to investigate the allegations, such as its own intelligence services.
Israeli allegations about UNRWA staff made headlines in January, after Israel said several employees were involved in the October 7 killings.
But an audit report by independent experts later concluded that UNRWA had put in place “robust” mechanisms to uphold the principle of neutrality, but there was also room for improvement.