Israel has not provided evidence to support claims that staff members of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, participated in the Oct. 7 attacks, an independent review led by the former French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna revealed.
The Colonna review, drafted with the assistance of three Nordic research institutes, underscores the lack of substantiation for broader allegations made by Israel in March, accusing numerous UNRWA employees of affiliating with Hamas or Islamic Jihad.
Major donors cut their funding to the agency in January, which is the primary source of humanitarian aid not only to Gaza but also to Palestinian refugees throughout the region, following Israel’s allegations.
This was despite the critical circumstances of Gaza’s 2.3 million people, the majority of whom have been displaced by Israel’s war since Oct. 7 and are struggling to access water, food, shelter, or medical care.
The report found that UNRWA has consistently supplied employee lists to Israel for vetting and that “the Israeli government has not informed Unrwa of any concerns relating to any Unrwa staff based on these staff lists since 2011.”
A more detailed assessment was sent to the UN by the three Nordic research bodies — the Swedish-based Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, the Norwegian Chr Michelsen Institute, and the Danish Institute for Human Rights.
“Israeli authorities have to date not provided any supporting evidence nor responded to letters from Unrwa in March, and again in April, requesting the names and supporting evidence that would enable Unrwa to open an investigation,” the report stated.
The Colonna report deemed UNRWA indispensable for providing essential humanitarian aid and services, the Guardian reported.
“In the absence of a political solution between Israel and the Palestinians, Unrwa remains pivotal in providing life-saving humanitarian aid and essential social services, particularly in health and education, to Palestinian refugees in Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the West Bank,” it said.
“As such, Unrwa is irreplaceable and indispensable to Palestinians’ human and economic development. In addition, many view Unrwa as a humanitarian lifeline.”
The Colonna review proposes several enhancements to neutrality safeguards for UNRWA’s staff of over 32,000, including expanding the internal oversight service, increasing in-person training, and boosting support from donor countries. However, it acknowledges that UNRWA’s current measures are already more stringent than those of many similar organizations.
“The review revealed that Unrwa has established a significant number of mechanisms and procedures to ensure compliance with the humanitarian principles, with emphasis on the principle of neutrality and that it possesses a more developed approach to neutrality than other similar UN or NGO entities,” it said
One common criticism from Israel is that UNRWA schools throughout the region use Palestinian Authority textbooks containing antisemitic content, the Guardian reported. However, the technical report by the Nordic institutions found little evidence to support these allegations.
“Three international assessments of PA textbooks in recent years have provided a nuanced picture,” the report said. “Two identified presence of bias and antagonistic content, but did not provide evidence of antisemitic content. The third assessment, by the (German-based) Georg Eckert Institute, studied 156 PA textbooks and identified two examples that it found to display antisemitic motifs but noted that one of them had already been removed, the other has been altered.”
The recent resumption of funding by most donor nations, pending the Colonna report, reflects ongoing developments, while US financial support remains permanently banned due to the allegations.
A separate investigation by the UN’s Office of Internal Oversight Services into the Oct. 7 attack continues, the Guardian reported.—Agencies
