Israel yet to show evidence UNRWA staff are members of terrorist groups

Israel has yet to provide supporting evidence of its claims that employees of the UN relief agency Unrwa are members of terrorist organisations, an independent review led by the former French foreign minister Catherine Colonna has found.

Israeli allegations of the involvement of Unrwa staff in the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel led major donors in January to cut their funding to the agency.

Ireland’s foreign minister, Micheál Martin, has welcomed the conclusion of the Colonna report into the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (Unwra), which found that Israel has yet to provide supporting evidence of its claims that employees of the UN relief agency are members of terrorist organisations.

The Colonna report, which was commissioned by the UN in the wake of Israeli allegations, found that Unrwa had regularly supplied Israel with lists of its employees 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”.

Allegations of the involvement of Unrwa staff in the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel led major donors in January to cut their funding to the agency, the main channel of humanitarian support not only to Palestinians in Gaza but to Palestinian refugee communities across the region.

Speaking in Cairo ahead of a meeting with the Egyptian foreign minister and a visit to the Rafah crossing into Gaza, Martin said the report had vindicated Ireland’s response to the allegations made by Israel.