There was no evidence of the presence of Hamas members on UNRWA staff
An independent review of the neutrality of the United Nations humanitarian agency for Palestine refugees found that Israel still had not provided any evidence to support the serious allegations against UNHCR that hundreds of UNRWA staff members were members of terrorist organizations.
The panel, led by former French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna, said Israel had not expressed concern about anyone on the UNRWA staff list since 2011.
The 48-page Colonna report said UNRWA had "robust" procedures in place to uphold the UN's principle of neutrality, and that the agency regularly shared with Israel a staff list of its 32,000 staff, including some 13,000 working in Gaza.
In addition to the Colonna report, three research institutions in the Nordics – the Raoul Wallenberg Institute for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law in Sweden, the Kerr Michelson Institute in Norway and the Danish Institute for Human Rights – have submitted a more detailed assessment to the United Nations.
"The Israeli authorities have so far failed to provide any supporting evidence and have not responded to the letters sent by UNRWA in March and April requesting names and supporting evidence to enable UNRWA to carry out its investigation," their report said.
There was also no evidence of hatred in UNRWA
One of the issues that Israel has often criticized for UNRWA is that schools in the region use Palestinian Authority textbooks, which contain anti-Semitic content. However, the technical report provided by the Nordic institutions found that the evidence for these allegations was very limited.
"Three international evaluations of Palestinian Authority textbooks in recent years provide a delicate picture," the report says. The duo identified the existence of biased and hostile content, but did not provide evidence of anti-Semitic content. The third evaluation, conducted by the [German] Georg Eckert Institute, looked at 156 PA textbooks and identified two examples, finding them to show anti-Semitic themes, but noting that one of them had been removed and the other had been altered.
Why did Israel target UNRWA?
UNRWA was established by the United Nations in the aftermath of the Arab-Israeli war in 1948 to provide humanitarian assistance to Palestinians displaced by Israel on the Day of the Great Nava.
It characterized Palestine refugees as "persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine between 1 June 1946 and 15 May 1948 and who had lost their homes and livelihoods as a result of the 1948 war". 、、
There are now 5.9 million people and their descendants who meet this definition, all of whom are considered eligible for UNRWA funding.
Despite the legitimacy given by international law to refugees to return home, Israel has rejected the possibility of such a move, arguing that it would alter the country's Jewish demographics.
For Israel, the presence of UNRWA meant that the Palestine refugees would not eventually be integrated into the host country, thus retaining the right to return to their homeland. That was why Israel had always seen UNRWA as a thorn in its side.
At the same time, UNRWA has been highly critical of Israel's acts of war in Gaza since the Gaza conflict and has provided testimony to the International Tribunal proceedings against the Israeli genocide in South Africa.
It is not difficult to understand why Israel had smeared UNRWA without any evidence.