Documents reveal alleged pattern of Israeli harassment of UNRWA workers on West Bank
The exterior of an UNRWA health centre in Gaza damaged during the war in Gaza, an image taken from video released in February 2024
Jason Burke reports in The Guardian on 19 March 2024:
UN staff working with Palestinians in the occupied West Bank have been subjected to a systematic campaign of obstruction and harassment by the Israeli military and authorities since the beginning of the conflict in Gaza five months ago, according to internal UN documents obtained by the Guardian.
The documents record hundreds of incidents ranging from the alleged blindfolding and beating of UN staff at checkpoints to the use of UN facilities by Israeli troops as firing positions during raids on refugee camps in which Palestinians were killed.
The documents have been compiled by UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine, which has provided essential services to the Palestinians in the occupied territories for decades. The agency has been at the centre of a bitter controversy after being accused by Israel of collaborating with Hamas in Gaza. It denies the charge and says no solid evidence has been presented to support the allegation.
Juliette Touma, UNRWA’s spokesperson, who said she had not seen the documents, said the incidents in the West Bank – where the agency runs 96 schools and 43 health clinics for 871,000 registered refugees – detailed in the internal documents were “part of a wider pattern of harassment that we are seeing against UNRWA in the West Bank and Jerusalem”.
A spokesperson for the IDF said they had “no issues with UNRWA in the West Bank”, adding: “We are not trying to harass them. There is nothing we intentionally do to disturb their important work. We are unable to verify these claims and we have not been presented with evidence [for them]. We have a good relationship with UNRWA and other organisations in the West Bank.”
A barrage of rhetoric aimed at UNRWA by senior officials has inflamed public sentiment in Israel.