NEW YORK: Israelis who were taken hostage or lost loved ones during Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack are suing the United Nations agency that aids Palestinians, claiming it has helped finance the militants by paying agency staffers in US dollars and thereby funneling them to money-changers in Gaza who allegedly give a cut to Hamas.
But the agency, known as UNWRA, told The Associated Press on Tuesday that the staffers were paid in dollars by their own choice. Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank don’t have their own national currency, and primarily use Israeli shekels.
The lawsuit, filed Monday in a US federal court in New York, marks the latest challenge to the beleaguered UN agency, which has been the main supplier of food, water and shelter to civilians during the Israel-Hamas war. The Israeli government has long assailed the over 70-year-old agency, and scrutiny has intensified during the eight-month-long war, prompting UNRWA to defend itself while grappling with a spiraling humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
“UNRWA’s staff, facilities and ability to truck cash US dollars into Gaza formed a potent pillar of Hamas’ plan to undertake the Oct. 7 attack,” the lawsuit says, asserting that the UN agency “systematically and deliberately aided and abetted Hamas and its goals.”
UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said Tuesday that he learned of the case only through the media.
“I don’t know what the status of this lawsuit is all about, but for the time being, I see this as an additional way to put pressure on the agency,” he said at a press briefing in Geneva.
UNRWA has denied that it knowingly aids Hamas or any other militant group.
Israel invaded Gaza after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, in which militants killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted about 250. The war has killed more than 37,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which doesn’t say how many were civilians or fighters.
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of scores of Israelis including Oct. 7 attack survivors, victims’ relatives, and rescued captives. It echoes some complaints their government has raised, ranging from claims that UNRWA employs Hamas operatives to complaints about the content of textbooks in UNRWA-run schools.
But the suit also focuses on the agency’s practice of paying its 13,000 Gaza staffers in US dollars. The money is wired from a bank in New York and trucked into Gaza, according to the legal complaint, which says the payroll totaled at least $20 million a month from 2018 until last September.
UNRWA employees use local money-changers to convert their dollars to Israeli shekels, the complaint says.
Some Palestinians also use dollars or Jordanian dinars, viewing them as stable and trusted currencies.
The suit claims that Hamas, which has controlled Gaza since 2007, “runs the majority” of the currency exchangers and extracts a 10 percent to 25 percent fee from the rest, “ensuring that a predictable percentage of UNRWA’s payroll went to Hamas” in dollars useful for black-market weapons deals.
“Hamas’ ability to carry out the Oct. 7 attack would have been significantly and possibly fatally weakened without that UNRWA-provided cash,” the complaint says.
The complaint points to an UNRWA-commissioned 2018 report about delivering aid in cash that noted risks of misappropriation, fraud or other diversion away from the intended purpose.
UNRWA spokesperson Juliette Touma said in a message to the AP that Gaza staffers asked that “they are paid in $ because Gaza does not have an official national currency.”
Touma said the UN, including UNRWA, and their officials are immune from lawsuits. She declined to comment further on the suit in question, saying the agency hadn’t officially been served with it.
One of the plaintiffs’ lead lawyers, Gavi Mairone, said in a statement Tuesday that they didn’t believe the UN and officials named in the suit had immunity, “and certainly not from these claims.”
Formally called the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East, UNRWA was established to help the estimated 700,000 Palestinians who fled or were driven out of what is now Israel during the 1948 war surrounding the country’s creation. Their descendants now number nearly 6 million.
The agency operates schools, health clinics, infrastructure projects and aid programs in refugee camps in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan.
Since the war began in Gaza, over 1.7 million people have taken shelter in UNRWA facilities. At least 500 displaced people have been killed when such facilities came under attack, according to UNWRA statistics released Friday. The agency has lost nearly 200 staffers.
Two UN officials said Tuesday that the world body warned Israel that Gaza aid operations would be suspended unless protections for humanitarian workers improve.
Israel has accused UNRWA of letting Hamas exploit its aid and facilities, and Israel claimed this winter that a dozen UNRWA employees participated in the Oct. 7 attacks.
The allegations prompted the US and more than a dozen other countries to suspend hundreds of millions of dollars in contributions to the agency, though all but the US and Britain have resumed their funding. Lazzarini said Tuesday that new donors also have come on board, but the agency still faces a year-end shortfall of up to $140 million.
Israelis’ lawsuit says UN agency helps Hamas by paying Gaza staff in dollars
https://arab.news/7638g
Israelis’ lawsuit says UN agency helps Hamas by paying Gaza staff in dollars
- The Israeli government has long assailed the over 70-year-old agency, and scrutiny has intensified during the eight-month-long war, prompting UNRWA to defend itself while grappling with a spiraling humanitarian crisis in Gaza
Syria destroys millions of captagon pills, other drugs
A 2022 AFP investigation found that Syria under Assad had become a narco state, with the $10-billion captagon industry dwarfing all other exports and funding both his regime and many of his enemies.
“We destroyed large quantities of narcotic pills,” said official Badr Youssef, including “about 100 million captagon pills and 10 to 15 tons of hashish” as well as raw materials used to produce captagon.
He spoke from the Damascus headquarters of the defunct Fourth Division where the drugs were seized. The Fourth Division, a notorious branch of the Syrian army, was controlled by Assad’s brother Maher.
The official SANA news agency said “the anti-narcotics department of the (interior) ministry is destroying narcotic substances seized at the headquarters of the Fourth Division.”
An AFP photographer saw security personnel in a Fourth Division warehouse load dozens of bags filled with pills and other drugs into trucks, before taking them to a field to be burned.
On December 8, Islamist-led rebels ousted Assad after a lightning offensive that lasted less than two weeks. The army and Assad’s security apparatus collapsed as the new authorities seized control of Damascus.
On Saturday, SANA reported that authorities had seized “a huge warehouse belonging to the former regime” in the coastal city of Latakia. It said the factory “specialized in packing captagon pills into children’s toys and furniture.”
On Sunday, an AFP photographer visited the warehouse near the port and saw security personnel dismantling children’s bicycles that contained the small white pills.
Captagon pills had also been hidden inside objects such as doors, shisha water pipes and car parts, he reported.
Abu Rayyan, a security official in Latakia, said that “about 50 to 60 million captagon pills” had been seized that “belonged to the Fourth Division.”
“This is the largest such warehouse in the area,” he said.
Abu Rayyan said the drugs had been packed for export from Latakia “to neighboring countries,” and that they would be destroyed.
Syrian defense minister rejects Kurdish proposal for its own military bloc
- Defense minister aims to bring anti-Assad factions into unified command
- Kurdish SDF has proposed retaining own bloc in armed forces
DAMASCUS: Syria’s new defense minister said on Sunday it would not be right for US-backed Kurdish fighters based in the country’s northeast to retain their own bloc within the broader integrated Syrian armed forces.
Speaking to Reuters at the Defense Ministry in Damascus, Murhaf Abu Qasra said the leadership of the Kurdish fighters, known as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), was procrastinating in its handling of the complex issue.
The SDF, which has carved out a semi-autonomous zone through 14 years of civil war, has been in talks with the new administration in Damascus led by former rebels who toppled President Bashar Assad on Dec. 8.
SDF commander Mazloum Abdi has said one of their central demands is a decentralized administration, saying in an interview with Saudi Arabia’s Asharq News channel last week that the SDF was open to integrating with the Defense Ministry but as “a military bloc,” and without dissolving.
Abu Qasra rejected that proposal on Sunday.
“We say that they would enter the Defense Ministry within the hierarchy of the Defense Ministry, and be distributed in a military way — we have no issue there,” said Abu Qasra, who was appointed defense minister on Dec. 21.
“But for them to remain a military bloc within the Defense Ministry, such a bloc within a big institution is not right.”
One of the minister’s priorities since taking office has been integrating Syria’s myriad anti-Assad factions into a unified command structure.
But doing so with the SDF has proved challenging. The US considers the group a key ally against Daesh militants, but neighboring Turkiye regards it as a national security threat.
Abu Qasra said he had met the SDF’s leaders but accused them of “procrastinating” in talks over their integration, and said incorporating them in the Defense Ministry like other ex-rebel factions was “a right of the Syrian state.”
Abu Qasra was appointed to the transitional government about two weeks after Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, the Islamist group to which he belongs, led the offensive that ousted Assad.
He said he hoped to finish the integration process, including appointing some senior military figures, by March 1, when the transitional government’s time in power is set to end.
Asked how he responded to criticism that a transitional council should not make such appointments or carry out such sweeping changes of the military infrastructure, he said “security issues” had prompted the new state to prioritize the matter.
“We are in a race against time and every day makes a difference,” he said.
The new administration was also criticized over its decision to give some foreigners, including Egyptians and Jordanians, ranks in the new military.
Abu Qasra acknowledged the decision had created a firestorm but said he was not aware of any requests to extradite any of the foreign fighters.
Aid trucks arrive at Israeli-controlled Kerem Shalom crossing ahead of Gaza entry, two sources say
CAIRO: About 200 aid delivery trucks, including 20 carrying fuel, began arriving on Sunday at the Israeli-controlled Kerem Shalom crossing ahead of entry into the Gaza Strip, two Egyptian sources told Reuters.
A ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas in Gaza took effect on Sunday morning after a nearly three-hour delay, pausing a 15-month-old war that has shaken up the Middle East.
The aid trucks were using the Kerem Shalom entry point pending completion of maintenance at the Rafah border crossing into southern Gaza from Egypt, the sources said.
Israeli hardline minister Ben-Gvir quits government over Gaza deal
- The Otzma Yehudit party is no longer part of the ruling coalition
JERUSALEM: Hardline Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and two other ministers from his nationalist-religious party have resigned from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet over the Gaza ceasefire deal, their party said on Sunday.
The Otzma Yehudit party is no longer part of the ruling coalition but has said it will not try to bring down Netanyahu’s government.
In a statement, it called the ceasefire deal a “capitulation to Hamas” and denounced what it called the “release of hundreds of murderers” and the “renouncing of the (Israeli military’s) achievements in the war” in Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu retains a slim majority in the Israeli parliament despite their resignation.
Israel-Hamas truce in Gaza begins, after delay
- Israeli strikes killed 8 people during delay, says Gaza's civil defense agency
- Israel confirms receiving hostages list that caused the delay in ceasefire
JERUSALEM: Israel on Sunday said a truce with Hamas began in Gaza at 0915 GMT, nearly three hours after initially scheduled, following a last-minute delay on the orders of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
During the delay, Gaza’s civil defense agency said Israeli strikes killed eight people.
A statement from Netanyahu’s office, issued less than an hour before the truce had been set to start at 8:30 a.m. (0630 GMT), said he had “instructed the IDF (military) that the ceasefire... will not begin until Israel has received the list” of hostages to be freed.
Hamas attributed the delay to “technical reasons,” as well as the “complexities of the field situation and the continued bombing,” ultimately publishing at around 10:30 a.m. the names of three Israeli women to be released on Sunday.
Israel confirmed it had received the list and was “checking the details,” before confirming shortly afterwards that the truce would begin at 11:15 am local time.
AFPTV live images from northeastern Gaza showed a plume of grey smoke about 30 minutes after the truce was earlier to take effect, and again around 30 minutes later.
The Israeli military confirmed it was continuing “to strike within the Gaza area” following Netanyahu’s directive.
Gaza civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal said three people were killed in the north of the territory and five in Gaza City, with 25 wounded.
AFP images showed displaced Gazans streaming northwards from areas around Gaza City where they had been sheltering, some flashing the victory sign.
But others saw their plans to return home thwarted by the delay of the ceasefire.
“I was on my way home with my family when we heard the sound of bombing,” said Mohammed Baraka, 36.
“We can’t reach our house; the situation is dangerous. I don’t know what to do. I feel frustrated and devastated.”
The initial exchange was to see three Israeli hostages released from captivity in return for a first group of Palestinian prisoners.
A total of 33 hostages taken by militants during Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel will be returned from Gaza during an initial 42-day truce.
Under the deal, hundreds of Palestinian prisoners will be released from Israeli jails.
The truce is intended to pave the way for an end to more than 15 months of war sparked by Hamas’s attack, the deadliest in Israeli history.
It follows a deal struck by mediators Qatar, the United States and Egypt after months of negotiations, and takes effect on the eve of Donald Trump’s inauguration as US president.
In a televised address on Saturday, Netanyahu called the 42-day first phase a “temporary ceasefire” and said Israel had US support to return to war if necessary.
In Gaza City, shortly after the deal was initially meant to go into effect, people were already celebrating, waving Palestinian flags in the street.
But as it became clear the hostilities were continuing, the joy gave way to desperation for some.
“I’m dying of despair,” said Maha Abed, a 27-year-old displaced from Rafah who had been waiting since dawn for her husband to pick her up and take her home. “He called to tell me we won’t be returning today. The drones are firing at civilians.”
“Enough playing with our emotions — we’re exhausted,” she added. “I don’t want to spend another night in this tent.”
In Deir Al-Balah, an AFP journalist observed dozens of Palestinians gathered in front of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital seeking information about the unfolding events, particularly whether or not they would be able to return to their homes.
The Israeli army warned Gaza residents early Sunday not to approach its forces or Israeli territory.
“We urge you not to head toward the buffer zone or IDF forces for your safety,” military spokesman Avichay Adraee said on Telegram.
“At this stage, heading toward the buffer zone or moving from south to north via Gaza Valley puts you at risk.”
At a rally for the hostages in Tel Aviv the night before, attendees were guarded ahead of the scheduled exchanges.
“I’m really stressed because I don’t know about the situation of Ofer, my cousin,” said Ifat Kaldron, whose cousin is among the hostages.
“I’m just going to be happy whenever I see the last hostage crossing the border.”
Israel has prepared reception centers to provide medical treatment and counselling to the freed hostages before they return to their families after their long ordeal.
Israel’s justice ministry had previously said 737 Palestinian prisoners and detainees would be freed during the deal’s first phase, starting from 4:00 p.m. (1400 GMT) on Sunday.
Egypt on Saturday said more than 1,890 Palestinian prisoners would be freed in the initial phase.
Hundreds of trucks waited at the Gaza border, poised to enter from Egypt as soon as they get the all-clear to deliver desperately needed aid.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty said 600 trucks a day would enter Gaza after the ceasefire takes effect, including 50 carrying fuel.
There has been only one previous truce in the war, lasting for one week in November 2023.
That ceasefire also saw the release of hostages held by militants in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.
Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,210 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Of the 251 people taken hostage, 94 are still in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign has destroyed much of Gaza, killing at least 46,899 people, most of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.
The truce was to take effect on the eve of Trump’s inauguration for a second term as president of the United States.
Trump, who claimed credit for the ceasefire deal, after months of effort by the outgoing administration of President Joe Biden, told US network NBC on Saturday that he had told Netanyahu that the war “has to end.”
“We want it to end, but to keep doing what has to be done,” he said.
Brett McGurk, the pointman for outgoing President Joe Biden, was joined in the region by Trump envoy Steve Witkoff in an unusual pairing to finalize the agreement, US officials said.
Under the deal, Israeli forces will withdraw from densely populated areas of Gaza and allow displaced Palestinians to return “to their residences,” the Qatari prime minister said.
Biden said an unfinalized second phase of the agreement would bring a “permanent end to the war.”
