Israel’s allegations following the terrorist attack by Hamas on October 7th of the previous year, in which around 1,200 people were killed and a further 250 were abducted, were serious: UNRWA employees were said to have been involved in this attack, some even members of the radical group -Islamic militia. The UN itself then immediately set up a commission to investigate these allegations. This, named after the former French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna, has now come to the conclusion, according to the British “Guardian”, that there is insufficient evidence for this. The entire report should be published on Monday.
What’s more: UNRWA itself wrote letters to Israel in March and again in April, asking for names that were suspected of collaboration. But these questions all remained unanswered, it was said.
Immediately after it became known that Israel had made such serious allegations against the UN agency, most international donors to UNRWA stopped their payments, including Austria. For the Commission, this approach also represents a serious deterioration in the humanitarian situation for the Palestinians. UNRWA is indispensable for this population group, especially for their health and education situation. And not just in the Gaza Strip, where 2.3 million people are dependent on aid, but also for the Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, in Jordan, in Lebanon and in Syria.
The Colonna Commission also refuted a second accusation made by Israel. The government had accused UNRWA of using textbooks in schools that were written by Palestinian Authority authors and contained anti-Semitic propaganda. The UN report said that there was hardly any evidence for this.