UN sacks 9 officials for 2023 attack on Israel

The United Nations (UN) says nine staff working for its Palestine refugee agency UNRWA have been sacked for their involvement in the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel.

“For nine people, the evidence was sufficient to conclude that they may have been involved in the seventh of October attacks,” UN Deputy Spokesperson Farhan Haq told journalists in New York, United States, on Monday, August 5, 2024.

He was referring to findings of the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS), which he said had completed an investigation into the alleged involvement of 19 UNRWA staff members in the attacks, two of whom have since died.

OIOS is the highest investigative body in the UN system and its reports are confidential but can be made available to member states on request.

Monday’s announcement confirmed the dismissal of nine of them, Haq said. He said the records of the remainder would be reviewed.

Haq said all the nine individuals who the investigation concluded may have been involved were men. He did not give details of what they may have done.

“For us, any participation in the attacks is a tremendous betrayal of the sort of work that we are supposed to be doing on behalf of the Palestinian people,” he added.

The United Nations launched the investigation after Israel charged in January 2024 that 12 UNRWA staff took part in the Hamas-led October 7 attacks that triggered the Gaza war. Seven more cases were brought to the U.N.’s attention in March and April.

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Israel stepped up its accusations in March, saying over 450 UNRWA staff were military operatives in Gaza terrorist groups. UNRWA employs 32,000 people across its area of operations, 13,000 of them in Gaza, according to Reuters.

Shortly after the UN announcement, Israeli military spokesperson Nadav Shoshani posted on X, saying: “Your ‘relief’ agency has officially stooped to a new level of low, and it is time that the world sees your true face.”

Haq said the UN’s investigation had made findings in relation to 19 UNRWA staff members.

Apart from those who may have been involved in the attack, no evidence was obtained to support allegations of one staff member’s involvement, while in the other cases the evidence was insufficient to support their involvement.

UNWRA said in March that some employees released into Gaza from Israeli detention reported having been pressured by Israeli authorities into falsely stating that the agency has Hamas links and that staff took part in the October 7 attacks.

Haq said the details of the OIOS investigation were confidential and that since information used by Israeli authority officials to support their allegations have remained in their hands, “OIOS was not able to independently authenticate most of the information provided to it.”

The Star