An internal investigation into the 12 U.N. relief workers in Gaza who Israel alleged were involved in the Oct. 7 Hamas attack has cleared one person, “as no evidence was provided by Israel to support the allegations,” said Stéphane Dujarric, the spokesman for U.N. Secretary General António Guterres.
Investigations into an additional three cases have been suspended because of insufficient evidence provided by Israel, he said, and eight cases remain under investigation by the U.N. Office of Internal Oversight Services.
Since Israel made its initial charges in January — leading major donors, including the United States, to suspend support for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) — it has made allegations about seven additional UNRWA staffers, Dujarric said. These included five in March and two in April. Of those, an investigation into one “has also been suspended pending receipt of additional supporting evidence,” Dujarric said. “The remaining six of those cases are currently under investigation.”
Investigators with the U.N. Office of Internal Oversight Services traveled to Israel to meet with Israeli authorities and are expected to travel again in May, Dujarric said.
All of the initial 12 aid workers were immediately fired by UNRWA, although two were reported to have been killed during fighting in Gaza. Of those cases, the United Nations is considering what administrative action to take in the one case that has been cleared and the three in which investigations have been suspended. The employees involved in the seven new cases have been placed on administrative leave without pay.
Israel has long called for UNRWA to be dismantled, saying that Palestinians displaced decades ago by the establishment of the state of Israel and their descendants should not be considered refugees. At various points since the October attacks, Israel has publicly stated that many of UNRWA’s 13,000 staffers in Gaza — nearly all of whom are Palestinians — have ties to Hamas and other militant groups.
According to an independent assessment of UNRWA’s procedures to ensure neutrality among its employees that was released earlier this week, Israel has not provided evidence that significant numbers of workers of the aid agency have links to these groups.
A number of governments had already reversed their initial suspension of funding to the agency, and more followed after the report — led by former French foreign minister Catherine Colonna — essentially provided a clean bill of health for the organization, along with recommendations for improvement.
The U.S. intelligence community did not doubt, but could not verify, Israel’s claims about UNRWA workers on Oct. 7, U.S. officials told The Washington Post in February, citing a lack of independent information.
In response to the Colonna report, Israel again alleged — without evidence — that more than 2,135 UNRWA workers belong to either Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and that “one-fifth of UNRWA school administrators are Hamas members.”
The Biden administration has called UNRWA “indispensable” for the provision of humanitarian assistance in Gaza, but all U.S. support was barred until March of next year in a funding bill passed by Congress last month. The United States has long been the largest donor to UNRWA, providing nearly half of its budget.
Claire Parker, John Hudson and Michael Birnbaum contributed to this report.
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