New York — Israelis who were taken hostage or lost loved ones in the Hamas attack on October 7 are suing the United Nations agency that supports the Palestinians, accusing it of compensating them by paying its employees in U.S. dollars. It is alleged that they funded the militants by luring them to money changers in Gaza. Who is believed to have given a cut to Hamas.
But the agency, known as UNWRA, told The Associated Press on Tuesday that its employees were paid in dollars of their own choosing. Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank do not have their own currency and primarily use the Israeli shekel.
The lawsuit, filed Monday in U.S. federal court in New York, represents the latest challenge to the beleaguered U.N. agency that has served as a key source of food, water and shelter for civilians during the Israel-Hamas war. The Israeli government has long attacked the more than 70-year-old agency and increased surveillance during the eight-month war, leaving UNRWA to fend for itself as it battles the growing humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
“UNRWA’s ability to transport personnel, facilities, and cash into the Gaza Strip formed a powerful pillar of Hamas’s plan to carry out the October 7 attack,” the lawsuit alleges, adding that the UN agency “systematically and deliberately They supported and abetted Hamas and its followers.” target.”
UNRWA Secretary-General Philippe Lazzarini said Tuesday that he only learned of the incident through the media.
“I don’t know what the status of this lawsuit is, but for the time being I see this as an additional way to put pressure on the institution,” he said at a press briefing in Geneva.
UNRWA has denied that it is knowingly helping Hamas or any other armed group.
Israel invaded the Gaza Strip on October 7 due to an attack by Hamas. In the attack, militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapped about 250 others. The war has killed more than 37,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health ministry. They were either civilians or military.
The lawsuit was filed on Oct. 7 on behalf of dozens of Israelis, including survivors of the attack, victims’ families and rescued prisoners. This reflects some of the complaints made by the government, ranging from claims that UNRWA hired Hamas operatives to complaints about the content of textbooks in UNRWA-run schools.
But the lawsuit also focuses on the agency’s practices of paying its 13,000 Gaza employees in U.S. dollars. According to the complaint, the money was wired from a bank in New York and trucked to Gaza. It is said that from 2018 to last September, the salary amounted to at least $20 million per month.
UNRWA employees use local currency exchange offices to exchange dollars for Israeli shekels, the complaint states.
Some Palestinians also use the dollar or Jordanian dinar, which they consider a stable and trustworthy currency.
The suit alleges that Hamas, which has controlled the Gaza Strip since 2007, “operates the majority” of the currency exchange offices and extracts a 10 to 25 percent commission from the remainder, ensuring “a predictable proportion of UNRWA salaries are routed to Hamas in dollars.” . Useful for black market arms trading.
“Without the cash provided by UNRWA, Hamas’s ability to carry out the October 7 attack would have been significantly and perhaps fatally weakened,” the complaint states.
The complaint points to a 2018 report commissioned by UNRWA on the provision of cash assistance, which cited risks of abuse, fraud or other diversion from its intended purpose.
UNRWA spokeswoman Juliette Touma said in a message to The Associated Press that Gaza employees had requested “to be paid in U.S. dollars as Gaza does not have an official national currency.”
Touma said the United Nations and its officials, including UNRWA, are immune from lawsuits. She declined to comment further on the lawsuit in question, saying the agency had not officially received it.
Gavi Mairon, one of the plaintiffs’ lead attorneys, said in a statement Tuesday that he does not believe the United Nations and the officials named in the suit have immunity and “certainly are not immune from these claims.”
UNRWA, officially called the United Nations Relief and Action Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, was established in 1948 to assist the estimated 700,000 Palestinians who fled or were driven out of what is now Israel during Israel’s founding war. Their descendants now number nearly 6 million.
The organization operates schools, health centers, infrastructure projects and support programs in refugee camps in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan.
Since the start of the war in Gaza, more than 1.7 million people have been evacuated from UNRWA facilities. Attacks on these facilities have killed at least 500 people, according to UNWRA statistics released Friday. The agency lost nearly 200 employees.
Two United Nations officials said Tuesday that the world body has warned Israel that aid efforts in Gaza will be halted if protection for humanitarian workers is not improved.
Israel has accused UNRWA of allowing Hamas to use its aid facilities and facilities, and this winter claimed 12 UNRWA staff were involved in the October 7 attack.
The claims led the United States and more than a dozen countries to halt hundreds of millions of dollars in donations to the agency, but all but the United States and Britain resumed funding. Lazzarini said Tuesday that even though new donors have joined, the agency still faces a shortfall of up to $140 million at the end of the year.
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El Deeb reported from Beirut. Associated Press writer Jamey Keaten in Geneva contributed.
