mutual accusations proceed between UNRWA and the Jewish state | EUROtoday
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LThe standoff continues. Israel and the UN company for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) proceed to change a number of accusations, below suspicion of complacency, and even complicity, of the UN entity with Hamas.
Further rising the stress, Israel introduced on Monday the recall of its ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan. On X, Foreign Minister Israel Katz accuses the UN of passivity within the face of Hamas. In his publication, he denounces “the attempt to ignore the serious UN report on the massive rapes committed by Hamas and its allies on October 7”, justifying the recall of his ambassador.
READ ALSO Attack on Israel: rape, Hamas’ weapon of warfare “It took the United Nations five months to finally recognize the sexual crimes,” commented Gilad Erdan, referring to the “shame of the UN exposed for all to see.”
Responding to those accusations, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres denied having tried to stifle this investigation. “In no case has the secretary general done anything to keep this report silent,” indicated his spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric.
Israel accuses UN of being a 'terrorist group in Gaza'
In a speech to the United Nations General Assembly, Gilad Erdan additionally accused the UN of being “itself a terrorist organization”. This assertion refers to fees introduced towards twelve of its 30,000 regional workers who’re accused, in keeping with the Israeli military, of getting participated within the October 7 assaults.
After these claims in late January, the UN instantly separated itself from its accused workers and launched an inner investigation. At the identical time, Antonio Guterres entrusted an unbiased group with a mission to guage UNRWA and its “neutrality”.
But Israel renewed these accusations on Monday, contemplating that UNRWA has terrorists in its ranks. According to Israeli intelligence companies, “more than 450 terrorists belonging to terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip, mainly Hamas, are also employed by UNRWA,” the Israeli military stated in an announcement.
At the identical time, it revealed what it stated was a recording “of a terrorist working as an Arabic teacher in an UNRWA school” which “describes [le 7 octobre] his entry into Israeli territory and says he is holding Israeli women hostage.”
UN agency denounces “ordeal” experienced by Palestinian prisoners
A new episode of tense relations between Israel and the UN also occurred on Monday with the accusation of mistreatment by the Jewish state towards “hundreds of released prisoners”. According to the head of UNRWA, Philippe Lazzarini, an internal report from the UN agency reveals the “ordeal” experienced by detainees who returned “traumatized”.
“This is a wide range of mistreatment,” he said. “People systematically humiliated, people photographed naked, subject to verbal and psychological abuse, threats of electrocution”, or even “sleep deprivation, the use of extreme noise to prevent sleep”, “l 'use of dogs to intimidate'.
Earlier on Monday, Israeli authorities were accused by the agency of having committed acts of “torture” against some of its employees arrested in the Gaza Strip since October 7.
These accusations have been rejected by the Israeli authorities who think about them to be a “new attempt to create false equivalences with Hamas' systematic use of rape as a weapon of war”.
In this context of exchanges of accusations and denials, many international locations got here to the protection of the UN, which created UNRWA in 1949. “Two million people are totally dependent on the services of UNRWA,” thus underlined the Ambassador of Yemen Abdullah Ali Fadhel Al-Saadi, on behalf of the Arab international locations, calling on donors to renew their financing.
Since the beginning of the yr, round fifteen international locations have suspended the monetary assist they offered to the humanitarian company. The European Commission nonetheless introduced final Friday that it might launch 50 million euros, earlier than a attainable launch of a further 32 million euros in the long run.
https://www.lepoint.fr/monde/guerre-hamas-israel-les-accusations-mutuelles-continuent-entre-l-unrwa-et-l-etat-hebreu-05-03-2024-2554255_24.php