Foreign Ministry calls proposals for ‘cosmetic reforms’ in agency ‘meaningless,’ says nations should not resume funding, but instead divert money to other humanitarian efforts.
Israel has lambasted an interim report reviewing allegations against Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA as attempting to “cover up” the body’s failures and its ties to terror organizations in order to allow for it to resume receipt of global funding.
The report, commissioned by the UN and produced by an independent team headed up by former French foreign minister Catherine Colonna, found that the agency has mechanisms in place to ensure its neutrality, but also deficiencies that must be addressed.
The review group was established following Israëli allegations in late January that 12 of UNRWA’s employees actively participated in Hamas’s October 7 terror onslaught on southern communities, when terrorists murdered some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 253 hostages to Gaza. Israel argues that Hamas’s infiltration into the agency runs far deeper and that some 1,500 employees (some 10%) have active ties to terror groups.