NYT: Documents show top administrators at UNRWA schools were Hamas fighters
Some two dozen teachers, counselors and administrators at UNRWA schools in Gaza are members of Hamas or other terror groups, according to a foreign media report published Sunday based on documents provided by Israel.
The materials, seized from terror groups during the ongoing war that began with Hamas’s October 7, 2023, massacre, shed further light on Israel’s longstanding contention that the United Nations agency responsible for aid to Palestinians — which administered some 288 schools in the enclave before the war — has fostered radicalism, and been used by terror groups in their efforts against Israel.
The documents viewed by The New York Times identify 24 employees at 24 different UNRWA schools — the majority of them principals or deputy principals — who are registered members of Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad; about half of them had documented possession of lethal weaponry, including assault rifles and hand grenades, provided by the terror groups, or participated in their training exercises.
Gaza residents interviewed by the Times said Hamas’s presence in UN schools was something of an open secret, with one UNRWA educator “regularly seen after hours in Hamas fatigues carrying a Kalashnikov,” according to the report.
Another school principal, a Hamas member who was issued an assault rifle and a handgun, reportedly has a photo on his Facebook page depicting him standing in front of a Hamas banner.
The report also noted the presence of Hamas tunnels in UNRWA schools. It also cited internal Hamas documents listing two schools in particular that were used for hiding weapons, and calling schools and other civilian sites “the best obstacles to protect the resistance.” Israel has frequently encountered Hamas operatives in school buildings throughout the war.
The principal with the Hamas banner in his Facebook photo oversaw a school that was directly on top of a tunnel. UNRWA discovered the tunnel in 2017 and issued a statement at the time condemning Hamas for its use of the school, and saying it had moved to seal the tunnel’s entrances.
However, in several cases examined by the Times, the Israeli government provided written warnings to UNRWA that specific employees were terror group operatives, but the employees were not fired.
The Foreign Ministry alerted UNRWA in 2011, for example, that Naji Abu Aziz, the principal of the Khuza’a Prep Boys School, was connected to Hamas. Records seized more recently have shown that Abu Aziz is part of the chemistry unit of Hamas’s military manufacturing department. He is still listed as the principal of the school.
Philippe Lazzarini, the agency’s commissioner-general, told the Times that UNRWA has trouble getting information from Israel that would allow it to take action against employees connected to terror groups. He also said it was “extraordinarily interesting” that Israel had shared the Hamas documents with the newspaper, rather than with the UN itself.
Israel has long had a combative relationship with UNRWA, which it argues has perpetuated the Palestinian refugee crisis by allowing Refugee status to be passed down through generations. Frustration with UNRWA in Jerusalem has picked up over the past decade as Israel has found the Gaza-ruling Hamas terror group embedded within the agency’s infrastructure.
That anger peaked after Hamas’s October 7 onslaught, in which a number of UNRWA staffers were found to have participated, including kidnapping and killing Israelis. Israel has alleged that 10 percent of the UN agency’s staff in Gaza have ties to terror groups — a charge of which the agency says it has no evidence.
On November 1, the Knesset passed a bill banning UNRWA from operating from Israeli territory and prohibiting government agencies from working with UNRWA. The bill will take effect in early 2025.
The UN has previously said nine UNRWA staff members may have been involved in the attack and had been fired. The head of UNRWA’s teacher’s union in Lebanon was also killed by Israel recently, in his capacity as a Hamas commander there.
In October, UNRWA confirmed that a Hamas Nukhba commander killed in an Israeli strike, who led the killing and kidnapping of Israelis from a roadside bomb shelter near Kibbutz Re’im during the Hamas attack last year that started the war, had been employed by the agency since July 2022.
In February, the IDF revealed the existence of a subterranean Hamas data center directly beneath UNRWA’s Gaza Strip headquarters. The IDF has also repeatedly targeted Hamas command centers and gunmen hiding out in UNRWA schools.
UNRWA was established in 1949 following Israel’s 1948 War of Independence. It provides aid, health, and education to millions of Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, and neighboring Arab countries — Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan.
It is one of two UN refugee agencies. While UNRWA caters to Palestinians, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is responsible for all other refugees around the world.
The United Nations has repeatedly argued there is no alternative to UNRWA. Israel says its job can be carried out by other agencies it views as less corrupted by terror support.
Source » timesofisrael.com
