The 8 Days That Roiled the U.N.’s Top Agency in Gaza

When a senior U.S. diplomat known as the Israeli army final week to request additional particulars about Israeli allegations towards a United Nations company in Gaza, army leaders have been so stunned that they ordered an inside inquiry about how the data had reached the ears of overseas officers.

The allegations have been grave: 12 staff of the group, the United Nations Reduction and Works Company, or UNRWA, have been accused of becoming a member of Hamas’s Oct. 7 assault on Israel or its aftermath.

The claims bolstered Israel’s decades-old narrative about UNRWA: that it’s biased towards Israel and influenced by Hamas and different armed teams, fees that the company strongly rejects.

However whereas most Israeli officers oppose UNRWA, some army leaders didn’t need to see it shuttered amid a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. The truth is, it was not the army that disclosed the data to the USA however UNRWA itself.

The sequence of occasions started on Jan. 18, when Philippe Lazzarini, the top of UNRWA, met with a high Israeli diplomat in Tel Aviv. Mr. Lazzarini meets roughly as soon as a month in Israel with the diplomat, Amir Weissbrod, a deputy director normal on the Israeli International Ministry who oversees relationships with U.N. businesses. This was meant to be a routine dialogue concerning the supply of meals, gas and different help provides to Gaza, in line with a U.N. official briefed on the assembly.

As a substitute, Mr. Weissbrod got here equipped with the stunning intelligence about UNRWA, which had been given to him by officers within the army, in line with 4 officers aware of the scenario.

UNRWA is the most important help company on the bottom in Gaza, offering shelter to greater than half the inhabitants and coordinating the distribution of the meager help and gas provides that arrive by truck each day from Egypt and Israel. If UNRWA collapses and not using a plan for its alternative, some Israeli officers concern they are going to be compelled to fill the void.

But, every week after the allegations have been revealed, the agency’s survival is in question.

The United Nations introduced the allegations on Friday, Jan. 26, including that 9 of the 12 had been fired (two others have been already useless). That prompted a cascade of donor states to suspend their funding, on the identical day that the Worldwide Court docket of Justice known as on Israel to permit in additional help, as a part of its order that Israel prevent genocide in Gaza.

Then got here a good greater Israeli declare: that 10 p.c of UNRWA’s 13,000 staff in Gaza have been members of Hamas. Extra suspensions of funds adopted.

Now, the company says that its reserves may run out by the tip of the month, at the same time as help teams warn of a looming famine. “Our humanitarian operation, on which two million individuals rely as a lifeline in Gaza, is collapsing,” Mr. Lazzarini mentioned in an announcement.

And Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has seized the second to name for UNRWA’s closure.

“UNRWA’s mission has to finish,” Mr. Netanyahu mentioned in speech on Wednesday. “It needs to be changed by some group or organizations that can try this job.”

A part of Mr. Netanyahu’s anger on the group was rooted in the truth that the legal professionals who introduced the genocide case cited a number of UNRWA statements to help their case.

“Lots of the fees, false and unfounded, that have been leveled towards us in The Hague have been introduced by UNRWA officers,” Mr. Netanyahu mentioned.

Among the many dozen staff of Mr. Lazzarini’s company mentioned to have been concerned within the Hamas assault or its aftermath have been a counselor at an UNRWA college in southern Gaza, accused of abducting a girl from Israel. An UNRWA social employee from central Gaza was accused of abducting the physique of a useless Israeli soldier to Gaza. A 3rd was mentioned to have taken half in a raid on an Israeli village through which roughly 100 individuals died.

After the assembly in Israel, Mr. Lazzarini assessed the Israeli claims, flew to New York to fulfill with the U.N. secretary normal, António Guterres, and commenced firing the workers, the U.N. official mentioned. UNRWA informed United States officers concerning the scenario on Wednesday, Jan. 24, main U.S. diplomats to ask the Israeli safety companies for a fuller clarification.

The American request brought on consternation inside Israel’s army intelligence directorate and technique directorate, whose leaders had not identified that the claims had been handed to UNRWA itself, not to mention to the U.S. authorities. The technique directorate was involved that the claims had been circulated and not using a correct technique.

Even officers with the Israeli International Ministry have been stunned by the flip of occasions — each when UNRWA introduced the claims two days later and when donor states, together with the USA, introduced they have been suspending funding.

When the ministry had handed Mr. Lazzarini the claims, eight days earlier, few foresaw that the disclosure would result in such a furor so shortly, mentioned an official briefed on the choice. Israel has made so many accusations towards UNRWA through the years that nobody anticipated this declare to be the one which caught, the official mentioned.

Nonetheless, the Israeli political management was swift to try to capitalize on the developments. Inside a day, Israel Katz, the overseas minister, had known as for UNRWA to be “changed with businesses devoted to real peace.”

Israelis take difficulty with UNRWA partially as a result of they are saying its very existence is an impediment to a peace cope with the Palestinians.

The company was based in 1949 to look after Palestinians who fled or have been compelled from their houses in the course of the wars surrounding the start of the state of Israel, in a displacement identified in Arabic because the Nakba, or disaster.

Now, the company aids greater than 5 million refugees and their descendants who dwell throughout the Center East, together with a majority of the residents of Gaza.

For the refugees, the company champions their dream of returning to their households’ former houses. For that purpose, Israelis see it as a risk to Israel’s Jewish character: They concern the return of so many individuals to what’s now Israel would pose enormous demographic, safety and logistical threats.

However although many army officers agree with that stance, they have been cautious of making an attempt to knock out UNRWA and not using a clear successor, a number of officers mentioned.

Inside the army, generals and officers coping with the Gaza Strip debated the knowledge of fueling the dialogue about UNRWA, lest it immediate extra nations to withdraw funding in the course of a struggle.

However Israel’s political management appeared to have fewer issues.

In accordance with a authorities readout, Yoav Gallant, Israel’s protection minister, mentioned in a speech to overseas ambassadors on Thursday that UNRWA had “misplaced its legitimacy to exist.”