Israel dismisses probe into UNRWA terror links
The Israeli government said Tuesday that an independent probe into the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees was neither authentic nor exhaustive in investigating alleged terror links by its staff.
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The inquiry, led by former French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna, found that the organization could improve on issues such as neutrality and transparency, but it dismissed Israeli claims that officials with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) had provided evidence of terrorist ties.
Israel, however, said that "the Colonna report ignores the gravity of the problem and offers cosmetic solutions that do not address the massive infiltration" of the UNRWA by the Palestinian militant group Hamas.
"Hamas has infiltrated UNRWA so deeply that it is no longer possible to distinguish where UNRWA ends and Hamas begins," Marmorstein said.
The Israeli spokesman said that "over 2,135 UNRWA employees are members of Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad and that one-fifth of the UNRWA school principals are Hamas members."
The inquiry was launched after Israel alleged that dozens of UNRWA workers belonged to Hamas, prompting their dismissal.
"The problem with UNRWA-Gaza is not a few bad apples, but an entire rotten and poisonous tree whose roots are Hamas," Marmorstein said.
"UNRWA-Gaza is part of the problem, not part of the solution. ... UNRWA cannot be part of the solution in Gaza now and cannot be part of the solution in the future," Israel said, adding that "there are alternatives."
The country has called on the international community to stop funding UNRWA and give the money to other humanitarian organizations in Gaza.
UNRWA is considered the "backbone" of humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip, where more than 34,000 people, the vast majority civilians, have been killed in Israeli military operations in response to rocket fire from Hamas since October 2007, leaving some 1,200 dead and 250,000 homeless.
See also: Investigação exclui provas de ligações terroristas de funcionários da ONU (Portuguese version)
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