UN “Impartiality” in Gaza
(Updated January 2009)
Who killed the Palestinian driver
of an aid truck and wounded two others as
their convoy made its way into the Gaza
Strip through the Erez crossing during the January
8, 2009, “humanitarian
cease-fire?”
Predictably, the UN immediately
blamed Israel and the media reported the
allegation that IDF tank
shells blasted the truck. According to the Magen
David Adom medic who said he
took the Palestinians to an Israeli
hospital, the truck actually came under Hamas sniper
fire. A spokeswoman for the hospital treating
the injured Palestinians supported the Israeli
account when she confirmed that the two surviving
Palestinians were being treated for gunshot
wounds (Jerusalem
Post, January 8, 2009).
United
Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) spokesman
Chris Gunness unequivocally asserted that
UN personnel were “coming under deliberate
attack by the Israeli army” and specifically
cited the shooting of the truck driver as
an example (The
National, January 9, 2009). The following
day, however, he backtracked, saying the agency
had not accused Israel of deliberately targeting
its personnel and had based its account on
reports from truck drivers at the scene, who
saw an Israeli tank nearby and “were
in no doubt they had been fired upon” (Reuters,
January 10, 2009). He also claimed the UN “was
careful to source its information from eyewitnesses
on the ground,” but then said he was
keen to “clear the fog of war” and
was still
trying to get to the bottom of the incident
(Jerusalem
Post, January 10, 2009).
Israel denied it was responsible
for the death of the United Nations worker
and it is absurd to suggest that Israel would
have any interest in targeting UN officials.
On the contrary, Israel is ensuring that humanitarian
aid is transferred into Gaza and has
ordered a three-hour cease-fire every day
to facilitate the safety of aid workers and
transport drivers traveling in and out of
Gaza. Hamas,
however, refuses to stop its terror attacks
during this period, fires on the
convoys and does not recognize civilians
in Gaza as anything but shields for their
activities.
On January 9, for example,
terrorists broke the three-hour humanitarian
truce, during which Israel let in vital aid
to the Strip via the Kerem Shalom border
crossing. While the supplies were being transferred,
Gaza gunmen fired several mortar shells at
the terminal. The terrorists also fired three
Grad-type rockets at Ashdod after the truce
was supposed to begin (Jerusalem
Post,
January 9, 2009).
UNRWA meanwhile provides
for many of the Palestinians’ needs and is primarily
staffed by people sympathetic to their cause
who have allowed UN facilities to be used
by terrorists and looked the other way while
Palestinians have victimized each other and
attacked Israelis. Reuters reported, for example,
that “by
day, Awad al-Qiq was a respected science
teacher and headmaster at a United Nations
school in the Gaza Strip. By night, Palestinian
militants say, he built rockets for Islamic
Jihad” (Reuters,
May 5, 2008). Some UNRWA employees have
also had prominent roles with Hamas, such
as teacher Saeed Seyam, who was interior minister
in the Hamas-led government.
“UN schools in Gaza
long ago stopped being just schools,” Public
Security Minister and former Shin Bet head
Avi Dichter noted in a report on how Hamas
was also using hospitals as bases. “All
these services and places are refuge for
Hamas terrorists and commanders” (Jerusalem
Post, January 12, 2009).
In 2004, Peter Hansen, commissioner-general
of UNRWA admitted
that the organization employed members of Hamas. “Oh
I’m sure that there are Hamas members
on the UNRWA payroll and I don’t see
that as a crime,” he told the Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation (October 4, 2004). “Hamas
as a political organization does not mean
that every member is a militant and we do
not do political vetting and exclude people
from one persuasion against another.” Although
Hansen made specious distinctions between
members of Hamas,
the United States and the European Union,
the two largest contributors to UNRWA, banned
the military and civilian wings of the organization.
That same year, an Israeli
television station aired footage of armed
Arab terrorists in southern Gaza using an
ambulance owned and operated by UNRWA.
Palestinian gunmen used the UNRWA emergency
vehicle as getaway transportation after murdering
six Israeli soldiers in Gaza City on May
11, 2004.
In a 2002 report, Rep.
Eric Cantor (R-VA) reported how “buildings
and warehouses under UNRWA supervision
are allegedly being used as storage areas
for Palestinian ammunition and counterfeit
currency factories.” Cantor’s
2002 report also noted that UNRWA hosts
summer camps in martyrdom for young terrorists-in-training.
What is happening in Gaza now also should
come as no surprise given Cantor’s
finding that “while UNRWA claims
to be a humanitarian organization, it allows
terrorist organizations in Jenin to use local
civilians as human shields. While terrorists
launch attacks against the Israeli army out
of occupied houses and apartment buildings, UNRWA turns
its head” (Task
Force on Terrorism & Unconventional Warfare,
May 22, 2002).
Palestinian refugee
camps have long been nests of terrorism,
but the evidence was not publicized until
after Israel’s Operation Defensive
Shield in early 2002. The UNRWA-administered
camps in the West
Bank were found to have small-arms factories,
explosives laboratories, arms caches and
large numbers of suicide
bombers and other terrorists using the
refugees as shields. Here are two specific
examples of UNRWA employees helping terrorists
(Asaf Romirowsky, “How UNRWA Supports
Hamas,” inFocus,
Fall 2007):
Nidal Abd al-Fattah Abdallah Nazzal, an
ambulance driver for UNRWA from Kalqiliya
in the West Bank, was arrested by Israeli
security services in August 2002 and
admitted that he was a Hamas activist. He
had transported weapons and explosives to
terrorists in his ambulance, taking advantage
of the freedom of movement afforded to UNRWA
vehicles by the Israelis.
Nahd Rashid Ahmad Atallah, a senior official
of UNRWA in the Gaza Strip, was also arrested
by Israeli security in August 2002. He
provided support to families of wanted Fatah and PFLP terrorists and used his
UNRWA car to transport armed members of
the “Popular
Resistance Committees,” a militant
faction of the Fatah movement, to carry
out attacks against Israeli troops at the
Karni Crossing.
Alaa Muhammad Ali Hassan,
a Tanzim member affiliated with Fatah, confessed
during interrogation that he had carried
out a sniper shooting from a school run by
UNRWA in the al-Ayn refugee camp near Nablus.
He also told his interrogators that bombs
intended for terrorist attacks were being
manufactured inside the UNRWA school’s
facilities (Intelligence and Terrorism Information
Center at the Center for Special Studies,
February 2002).
Since 2001, at least 17
Palestinians employed by UNRWA have
been arrested for alleged involvement in
terrorist activities. Among them is the agency’s
director of food supplies for Gaza refugees,
who admitted using his UN vehicle
to transport arms, explosives, and people
planning terrorist acts. A Hamas activist
employed as an UNRWA ambulance
driver admitted using his vehicle to transport
arms and messages to other
members of Hamas.
(Matthew Levitt, “Terror on the UN
Payroll?,” Peace Watch, DC: The
Washington Institute for Near East Policy,
October 13, 2004; Greg Myre, “Israel
Feuds With Agency Set Up to Aid Palestinians,” New
York Times, October 18, 2004).
UNRWA’s failure to
report on these activities, or to prevent
them, violate the UN’s own
conventions. Security
Council resolutions oblige UNRWA representatives
to take “appropriate steps to help
create a secure environment” in all “situations
where refugees [are]…vulnerable to
infiltration by armed elements.”
Schools under UNRWA’s jurisdiction
are also problematic. UNRWA takes
credit for assisting in the development of
the Palestinian curricula,
which, among other things, does not show
Israel on any maps. The schools are also
filled with posters and shrines to suicide
bombers. In 1998, the State Department
requested that UNRWA investigate
allegations that Palestinian
Authority curricular materials contained anti-Semitic references.
One book taught that “Treachery and
disloyalty are character traits of the Jews,” but UNRWA said
this was not offensive because it described
actual “historical events.” The
State Department ultimately reported to Congress
that the “UNRWA review
did reveal instances of anti-Semitic characterizations
and content” in the PA textbooks. (The
Weekly Standard, May 28, 2002).
UNRWA also
plays an indirect role in supporting Hamas.
As Asaf Romirowsky noted, “Hamas can
continue to divert international monies that
should be earmarked for food or electricity
to the stockpiling of weapons and the creation
of anti-Israel or anti-American propaganda
as long as UNRWA provides the services that
the negligent Hamas government should fulfill.
In this way, UNRWA is undermining the Western
strategy of weakening the Hamas government
in Gaza to encourage the return of Palestinian
Authority rule under President Mahmoud
Abbas” (Asaf Romirowsky, “How
UNRWA Supports Hamas,” inFocus,
Fall 2007).
History shows that UNRWA has
in many cases been an enabler for terrorists
and is not a credible source of information
about events in Gaza.
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