When the facts dazzle in the sun.
Published: 02/05/2024 22:00
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Following the terrorist attack on Israel on 7 October, UN Secretary-General António Guterres appointed an internal committee and an external group (the review group). The group was led by France’s former foreign minister Catherine Colonna with assistance from three Nordic research institutes. The results of the group’s work were presented at a press conference in April 2024.
The second committee is chaired by the UN’s Office for Internal Oversight (OIOS). The OIOS was mandated to investigate Israel’s claim that UNWRA staff participated in the terrorist attack on Israel. OIOS later chose to expand its investigations to include 19 people. The committee has not submitted a final report.
The group’s task
UNWRA has previously been accused of having an authoritarian form of governance and a lack of democratic processes. Among other things, Colonna’s group was tasked with assessing whether UNWRA’s form of governance is democratically rooted.
The group’s task was also to prepare an overview of which mechanisms have been implemented, and whether these are used in accordance with the intention.
The report reveals that there are strong disagreements in UNWRA with regard to pay, lack of adherence to trade unions, punishment for lack of discipline (disciplinary sanctions), threats and political pressure.
The ambition is that the results in the report will be used to improve documented weaknesses.
Selom question round
The group’s mandate did not include uncovering whether UNWRA has ties to various terrorist organisations, as several media have later reported.
During the presentation of the report, a series of questions was held during the press conference. The journalists in the room had only one focus, and that was whether Israel had presented relevant information for the group’s work. Something Colonna confirmed.
Colonna repeatedly stressed that the group has received all relevant information, including Israel’s claim that a large number of UNWRA staff in Gaza and the West Bank were members or had ties to terrorist organizations.
However, Colonna repeatedly emphasized that the group had no mandate to investigate the veracity of these claims.
The journalists in the room were obviously not satisfied with the answers, and the question round ended with a frustrated and irritated Colonna asking the journalists to read the report instead of casting doubt on the group’s work. (The press conference can be found in its entirety on the UN website.)
Obtained by Israeli intelligence
However, Colonna’s assurances did not fit into the media’s narrative, and media houses in several countries concluded that Israel had not provided documentation that there was a link between UNWRA and terrorist organisations. NRK also announced this in the channel’s newscast the next day.
Israel’s documentation that UNWRA employees have close ties to terrorist organisations, and that the infiltration affects all aspects of Palestinian society, has been obtained by Israeli intelligence. The documentation has been handed over to the UN, including Colonna’s review group.
The documentation has four main elements:
- UNWRA has 2,135 people in its workforce who are members of terrorist organizations.
- 20 per cent of all principals and deputy principals (deputy school principals) are members of terrorist organisations.
- 32 areas in Gaza contain terrorist infrastructure, including tunnels, tunnel entrances and rooms for war operations.
- UNWRA’s school system has revised obviously anti-Semitic books, but has introduced self-produced school materials (supplemental educational materials).
The UN has not yet been willing to investigate this documentation.
More uncertainty and tension
In the aftermath of the terrorist attack, Israel documented that several UNWRA employees were involved in the attack itself. This led to several countries freezing all financial support to UNWRA. Norway was one of the countries that did not let the information influence its own foreign policy. Norway even chose to increase the financial support.
What Israel is now revealing is that UNWRA’s connection to terrorism is far more extensive than it has previously been possible to document. The findings are overwhelming and mean that UNWRA has infiltrated all central areas of society. In plain language, this means that Hamas and other terrorist organizations have full control over UNWRA’s activities in the Gaza Strip.
Israel has handed over all referenced information to UNWRA’s central donor nations, including Norway.
So far, however, Norway has shown no interest in sharing this startling information with us at the Storting or the media. Norway has rather chosen a different variant and is now planning, according to Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide (Ap), to recognize Palestine as its own state.
Norway’s strategy is the recipe for creating even more uncertainty and tension in the Middle East.
