The UN has fired nine staff members from its agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, after an internal investigation found they may have been involved in the Hamas-led 7 October attack against Israel.
The UN secretary-general’s office announced the move in a brief statement on Monday. It did not elaborate on the UNRWA staffers’ possible role in the attack. It said the nine included seven staffers who were fired previously over the claims.
Farhan Haq, the UN deputy spokesperson, said: “For nine people, the evidence was sufficient to conclude that they may have been involved in the7 October attacks.” In 10 other cases, evidence failed to support allegations of involvement, he added.
The UN’s internal watchdog, the Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS), has been investigating the agency since January. Israel accused 19 UNRWA staffers of being involved in the 7 October attack in which militants killed 1,200 people and abducted about 250 others.
UNRWA employs 32,000 people across its area of operations, 13,000 of them in Gaza.
“OIOS made findings in relation to each of … 19 UNRWA staff members alleged to have been involved in the attacks,” Haq said.
“In one case, no evidence was obtained by OIOS to support the allegations of the staff member’s involvement, while in nine other cases, the evidence obtained by OIOS was insufficient to support the staff member’s involvement,” he said.
Haq said all the nine individuals who were fired were men.
He added: “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.”
Israel’s allegations prompted several top donor countries to temporarily suspend their funding for UNRWA, the main channel of humanitarian support not only to Palestinians in Gaza but to Palestinian refugee communities across the region.
That caused a cash crunch of about $450m despite the dire needs of 2.3 million people in Gaza, most of whom have been forced from their homes by the Israeli offensive and have been struggling to find water, food, shelter or medical care.
Since then, all donor countries except the US have decided to resume funding.
In a statement, UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said those individuals “cannot work for UNRWA,” insisting that staff must respect its policies, insisting on the “humanitarian principle of neutrality”.
“The agency’s priority is to continue lifesaving and critical services for Palestine refugees in Gaza and across the region, especially in the face of the ongoing war, the instability and risk of regional escalation,” he added.
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”.
However when pressed on why the UN was acting against nine, he said: “We have sufficient information in order to take the actions that we’re taking, which is to say, the termination of these nine individuals.”
Asked if this meant the UN considered that the nine were “likely or highly likely” to have been part of the attacks, he replied: “That’s a good way of describing it.”
The investigators also reviewed internal UNRWA information, including staff records, emails and other communications data.
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 7 October attacks.