Expanding Middle East Crisis: Hamas Discusses Proposal for a Pause in Fighting, Official Says
The United Nations agency charged with helping refugees in the Gaza Strip does not conduct extensive background checks on its employees, but annually provides a list of its thousands of staff in the enclave to Israeli authorities, current and former officials say organization. on Monday.
The organization, known as UNRWA, entered crisis over the weekend after Israel on Friday accused 12 of the group's employees of participating in the October 7 Hamas-led attacks or their aftermath. Several donor countries, including the United States, have temporarily suspended funding for the aid group, raising concerns that access to much-needed aid in Gaza will be cut.
Juliette Touma, UNRWA's communications director, said the agency is not equipped to conduct comprehensive background checks on applicants, but she stressed that it conducts reference checks and investigates concerns raised about individual staffers.
“We are a humanitarian organization, not a government,” she said in an interview, noting that the Israeli government had not objected to its most recent list of employees. The agency employs about 13,000 people in Gaza.
Lior Haiat, spokesperson for Israel's Foreign Ministry, confirmed that UNRWA shares lists of employees with Israeli officials, but said they contained minimal information and referred to employees many months earlier. Mr Haiat argued that it was UNRWA's responsibility – not Israel's – to screen workers.
UNRWA, the largest aid agency in Gaza, announced on Friday it would fire employees accused of taking part in the attacks. (On Sunday, the U.N. secretary-general said nine had been fired, and the aid agency said two were dead.) UNRWA said the U.N.'s top investigative body had begun investigating the allegations.
Matthias Schmale, director of UNRWA operations in Gaza from 2017 to 2021, said workers sign a pledge to remain neutral, and participate in recurring workshops that encourage abstention from political activity or violence.
“I think we did the best we could in very tense political circumstances and with limited resources,” he said, adding that the team tasked with enforcing neutrality in Gaza was halved during his term due to budget cuts of the Trump administration. Tamara Alrifai, another UNRWA spokeswoman, said that after President Biden restored the agency's funding, some of those positions were reduced.
Still, Mr. Schmale said those who violated the organization's policies faced swift consequences. Eight employees, he said, were fired under his watch for neutrality violations, their use of social media and physical abuse. One employee, he said, was discovered to be a member of Hamas's military wing after UNRWA staff discovered photographs proving their membership in the militant group.
Mr. Schmale himself has been embroiled in controversy. In 2021, Hamas accused him of making comments that minimized the toll of Israeli attacks during a brief war in Gaza that year, and amid protests he was transferred by UNRWA. He later walked back and voiced the comments sorry about them.
He said Monday that discipline is the “best deterrent” against neutrality violations, noting that Palestinians in Gaza want to keep their jobs at the UN, especially because of severe unemployment in the area. The small enclave, home to more than two million people, had an unemployment rate of almost 50 percent before the war.