On last day in office, UNRWA head urges probe into alleged IDF killing of nearly 400 workers |
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees and their descendants wants an investigation into the alleged killing of nearly 400 of its staff in the Gaza Strip, its outgoing chief said Tuesday.
Israel has claimed that over a thousand UNRWA employees had ties to terror groups and that UNRWA facilities were used for terrorist activities on multiple occasions, including in the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led onslaught.
Criticizing what he called an “extraordinary level of impunity,” UNRWA’s commissioner general, Philippe Lazzarini, on his last day on the job, claimed that Israel appeared to have “a license to kill” in Gaza.
“I believe that we need to have a… high-level panel of experts to look into the killing of our staff,” Lazzarini told reporters in Geneva.
The 62-year-old Swiss national condemned the alleged killing of “more than 390” of the agency’s staff in Gaza, during the war that was sparked by the October 7 massacre in Israel.
“Many others have sustained life-changing injuries or have been arbitrarily detained and tortured,” he said, calling for investigations into the alleged killings of other UN staff as well.
Lazzarini said he had raised the issue of an investigation with the office of UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and with UN member states.
He lamented that Israel’s conduct of the war gave the impression that “all possible red lines have been crossed, and there have never ever been any consequences, whether diplomatic, political, economic, legal, nothing.”
Israeli intelligence reportedly alleged during the war that some 10 percent of UNRWA’s 12,000 Gazan employees had ties to Palestinian terror groups and that at least 12 were involved in the October 7 onslaught. It also found several Hamas facilities located directly underneath multiple UNRWA facilities throughout the war.
At least one Israeli hostage abducted in the massacre has said she was held in an UNRWA facility, and the IDF has repeatedly targeted Hamas command centers and gunmen hiding out in UNRWA schools.
A series of UN-linked internal and external investigations found some “neutrality-related issues” at UNRWA, but claimed Israel had not provided conclusive evidence for its headline allegation.
Lazzarini claimed on Tuesday that killings of UNRWA staff and other aid workers, health workers and journalists were routinely justified by Israel, with the victims “labeled as being Hamas.”
He made a similar allegation regarding the fighting with Lebanon, which resumed on March 2 when the terror group Hezbollah began firing rockets at Israel’s north after a long hiatus.
Lazzarini asserted that some of those killed in the attacks, whom Israel “labeled as being Hezbollah,” may not have been terrorists. The UNRWA chief claimed that this represented a “spreading” of the purported sense of impunity beyond Gaza.
Referring to the ongoing US-Israeli war with Iran, Lazzarini argued that the world’s “abject failure” to respond set “the stage for a war outside the bounds of international law that is now spreading across and beyond the Middle East.”
Relations between Israel and Lazzarini’s agency, which provides aid, health and education to nearly six million Palestinians across Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, have long been strained, but they have fallen off a cliff since the start of the war.
The 5.9 million recipients of this assistance are registered by UNRWA as Palestinian refugees, a title given to any descendant of Arabs displaced in the war surrounding Israel’s creation in 1948. Israel has long argued that UNRWA’s definition, which is used for no other refugee population in the world, perpetuates the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by refusing to resettle them elsewhere, as is commonly done with other refugee populations.
Israel passed a law banning the UN agency from operating on its soil in October 2024, accusing the agency of providing cover for Hamas terrorists, and claiming that some of the agency’s employees took part in the October 7 attack.
Israeli authorities earlier this year also began demolishing UNRWA’s headquarters in east Jerusalem, in a move Lazzarini called “extraordinarily outrageous.”
Israel’s moves against the agency, coupled with severe funding cuts, have left UNRWA facing “collapse,” Lazzarini said. The United States was long UNRWA’s biggest donor, but froze funding in January 2024 after Israel accused agency staff of taking part in the October 7 attack.
If the international community fails to protect UNRWA, Lazzarini warned, “the consequences will be catastrophic for a generation or more.”
Lazzarini will be temporarily replaced at the agency’s helm by Christian Saunders, the special coordinator on improving the UN’s response to sexual exploitation and abuse.
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UNRWA United Nations Relief and Works Agency