A Reuters news report on March 9th found that Israeli troops in Gaza tortured United Nations employees to force them to make false confessions about involvement in the Palestinian resistance group Hamas and the October 7th attack on Israelis.
According to Reuters, the allegations were made in a still-unpublished report by the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) that their reporters were allowed to review.
The report was dated February 2024, and it details allegations of mistreatment in Israeli detention made by unidentified Palestinians, including several working for UNRWA.
UNRWA communications director Juliette Touma told Reuters reporters, “When the war comes to an end there needs to be a series of inquiries to look into all violations of human rights”.
The 11-page, unpublished report said that several UNRWA Palestinian staffers had been detained by the Israeli army, and that they experienced torture including severe physical beatings, waterboarding, and threats of harm to family members.
According to the unpublished report, “Agency staff members have been subject to threats and coercion by the Israeli authorities while in detention, and pressured to make false statements against the Agency, including that the Agency has affiliations with Hamas and that UNRWA staff members took part in the 7 October 2023 atrocities”.
The exposure of Israel’s torturing of Palestinian prisoners, including UN employees, came several days after an Israeli military spokesperson made the unheard of claim that 450 of the agency’s tens of thousands of employees were affiliated with Hamas or other resistance groups — but provided no evidence to back that claim.
Israel had claimed that 12 UN staffers had been involved in the October 7th attack – again without evidence, just a day after the International Court of Justice ruled against Israel saying that its actions constituted a plausible case of genocide in Gaza. This led the United States and several other countries to immediately revoke funding from the UN agency – despite the lack of evidence and the incredibly dire need of aid and support for the people of Gaza right now.
UNRWA head Philippe Lazzarini, said he “has never been informed”, nor has he received evidence, of Israeli claims. He said that UNRWA provides the Palestinian and Israeli authorities with full annual lists of their employees, and there has never been a concern raised.
In February, UNRWA stated that he humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip is untenable. An estimated 1·7 million people—over 75% of the population—have been displaced across Gaza as of Jan 30, 2024,1 often multiple times. Families have been forced to move multiple times in search of safety.
In the face of the ongoing war, the water, sanitation, and hygiene situation has reached a critical state. Although data collection is fraught with difficulties, UNRWA’s estimates of water availability in shelters paint a stark picture: on average, individuals in shelters in the southern governorates have access to a mere 8·8 L of water per person per day, 1·6 L for drinking and 7·2 L for domestic use. Sphere guidelines stipulate that a person needs a minimum of 7·5 L of water per day (including 2·5–3 L of drinking water) for survival, and recommend 15 L per person per day as the minimum emergency Sphere standard.4 Consequently, internally displaced people in UNRWA’s shelters have access to roughly half the daily minimum amount of drinking water required for survival. Most people are now resorting to unsafe water sources, leading to a surge in water-borne diseases.
