The eight days that roiled the top UN agency in Gaza

When a senior US diplomat called the Israeli military last week to ask for more details about Israeli accusations against a UN agency in Gaza, military leaders were so surprised that they ordered an internal investigation into how the information reached the ears of the Israelis. had reached foreign officials.

The allegations were serious: twelve employees of the organization, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), were accused of joining the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel or its aftermath.

The claims reinforced Israel's decades-old narrative about UNRWA: that it is biased against Israel and influenced by Hamas and other armed groups, accusations the organization strongly rejects.

But while most Israeli officials oppose UNRWA, some military leaders did not want UNRWA closed due to a humanitarian disaster in Gaza. In fact, it was not the military that disclosed the information to the United States, but UNRWA itself.

The series of events began on January 18, when Philippe Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA, met with a top Israeli diplomat in Tel Aviv. Mr. Lazzarini meets in Israel about once a month with diplomat Amir Weissbrod, a deputy director general at Israel's Foreign Ministry who oversees relations with U.N. agencies. This was intended as a routine discussion about the delivery of food, fuel and other relief supplies to Gaza, according to a UN official briefed on the meeting.

Instead, Mr. Weissbrod was given the shocking information about UNRWA, given to him by officers in the military, according to four officials familiar with the situation.

UNRWA is the largest aid agency on the ground in Gaza, sheltering more than half the population and coordinating the distribution of the meager aid and fuel supplies that arrive daily by truck from Egypt and Israel. If UNRWA collapses without a plan for its replacement, some Israeli officials fear they will be forced to fill the void.

But a week after the allegations were published, the agency's survival is at stake.

The United Nations announced the charges on Friday, January 26, adding that nine of the twelve had been discharged (two others were already dead). That prompted a wave of donor states to suspend their funding on the same day the International Court of Justice called on Israel to allow more aid as part of its order that Israel prevent genocide in Gaza.

Then came an even bigger Israeli claim: that 10 percent of UNRWA's 13,000 employees in Gaza were members of Hamas. More fund suspensions followed.

Now the agency says reserves could run out by the end of the month, even as aid groups warn of a looming famine. “Our humanitarian operation, on which two million people depend as a lifeline in Gaza, is collapsing,” Mr. Lazzarini said in a statement.

And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has seized the moment to call for the closure of UNRWA.

“UNRWA's mission must end,” Netanyahu said in a speech on Wednesday. “It needs to be replaced by some organization or organizations that will do that work.”

Part of Mr. Netanyahu's anger toward the group was rooted in the fact that the lawyers who brought the genocide case cited several UNRWA statements to support their case.

“Many of the accusations, false and baseless, leveled against us in The Hague were brought by UNRWA officials,” Netanyahu said.

Among the dozens of employees of Mr. Lazzarini's organization allegedly involved in the Hamas attack or its aftermath was a counselor at an UNRWA school in southern Gaza accused of kidnapping a woman from Israel. An UNRWA social worker from central Gaza was accused of kidnapping the body of a dead Israeli soldier into Gaza. A third is said to have taken part in an attack on an Israeli village that killed about a hundred people.

After the meeting in Israel, Mr. Lazzarini assessed Israeli claims, flew to New York to meet with U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres and began firing the workers, the U.N. official said. UNRWA told US officials about the situation on Wednesday, January 24, after which US diplomats asked Israeli security services for a more detailed explanation.

The US request caused an uproar within Israel's Directorate of Military Intelligence and Strategy, whose leaders were unaware that the claims had been relayed to UNRWA itself, let alone the US government. The Strategy Directorate was concerned that the claims had been spread without a proper strategy.

Even Israeli Foreign Ministry officials were surprised by the turn of events – both when UNRWA announced the claims two days later and when donor countries, including the United States, announced they were suspending funding.

When the ministry approved Mr. Lazzarini's claims eight days earlier, few anticipated that the revelation would spark such a furor so quickly, said an official briefed on the decision. Israel has made so many accusations against UNRWA over the years that no one expected the allegation to stick, the official said.

Yet Israel's political leadership was quick to try to capitalize on the developments. Within a day, Israel Katz, the foreign minister, had called for the replacement of UNRWA with agencies committed to real peace.

Israelis take issue with UNRWA in part because they say its existence is an obstacle to a peace deal with the Palestinians.

The agency was founded in 1949 to care for Palestinians who fled or were forced from their homes during the wars surrounding the birth of the state of Israel, in a displacement known in Arabic as the Nakba, or catastrophe.

Now the agency helps more than five million refugees and their descendants living across the Middle East, including a majority of Gaza residents.

For the refugees, the agency defends their dream of returning to the former homes of their families. For that reason, Israelis see it as a threat to Israel's Jewish character: they fear that the return of so many people to what is now Israel would pose enormous demographic, security and logistical threats.

But while many military officials agree with that view, they were wary of eliminating UNRWA without a clear successor, several officials said.

Within the military, generals and officers dealing with the Gaza Strip debated the wisdom of fueling discussion about UNRWA, lest it prompt more countries to withdraw funding in the middle of a war.

But Israel's political leadership seemed to have fewer concerns.

According to a government presentation, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said in a speech to foreign ambassadors on Thursday that UNRWA had “lost its legitimacy.”