Israel Produced NO Evidence to Support Claim that UNRWA Staffers Played Role in Hamas Attack: EU Official
Australia announced that it will begin funding to UNRWA again...the Biden administration has stopped any support.
Janez Lenarcic, the head of humanitarian aid and crisis management at the European Commission, said Thursday that Israel produced no evidence linking UNRWA staffers to Hamas after blockbuster claims that staffers took part in the October Hamas attack that resulted in the U.S. and West to abandon the vital agency.
He said no one at the EU has received evidence to back the Israeli charges that distracted from the International Court of Justice’s preliminary ruling that it is plausible that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, according to Reuters.
Penny Wong, Australia’s foreign minister, said the World Food Programme told her government “that there are large stocks of food outside of Gaza’s borders, but there’s no way to move it across the border into Gaza and deliver it at scale without Israel’s cooperation,” according to The Guardian.
NBC News reported that it viewed a diplomatic document known as the “UNRWA File.”
The report said Israel claimed that:
At least a dozen UNRWA staffers took part in the Oct 7. attacks and that 1,468 employees — or more than 11% — are “active members” of Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the second most prominent militant group in Gaza. NBC News can’t verify the identities of the staffers Israel says participated in the attacks, or the veracity of the claims about the evidence.
Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UNRWA, which Israel has long dreamed of closing down, announced last week that Israel has not provided evidence linking 450 agency employees to militant groups.
Israel allegedly abused and coerced detained UNRWA workers before getting them to admit to being involved in the 7 October Hamas attack that resulted in the U.S. and other Western countries cutting off all funding to the agency because of its alleged ties to the attack.
Josep Borrell, the EU foreign affairs chief, accused Israel of using hunger as a weapon in Gaza.
“This humanitarian crisis... is not a natural disaster, is not a flood, is not an earthquake, it is manmade,” Borrell said, according to 7 Israel National News. "When we look for alternative ways of providing support, by sea or by air, we have to remind that we have to do it because the natural way of providing support through roads is being closed, artificially closed.”
“When we condemn this happening in Ukraine, we have to use the same words of what's happening in Gaza,” he said.