What is broadly referred to as UNRWA involvement with terrorism involves a variety of different and sometimes overlapping aspects:
● the use of UNRWA facilities by terrorists
● terrorists who are in the employ of UNRWA
● refugees on the rolls of UNRWA and eligible for assistance who have terrorist connections
In early October of 2004, several occurrences involving UNRWA and terrorism took place in rapid succession:
● On October 3, in the midst of a spate of Kassam rocket attacks from Gaza aimed at Israeli civilians, the IDF announced that two days prior an IDF unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) had taken photographs of a group of Palestinian terrorists loading a Kassam
rocket into a UN (i.e., UNRWA) ambulance in the Jabalya refugee camp. The ambulance in question had been parked suspiciously some five or six meters away from where a group of Palestinians was digging a hole to plant a large roadside bomb.
The Washington Jewish Week ran photographs of UNRWA schools decorated with graffiti from Hamas and PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine), and with a map of a Palestine that ran from the Jordan to the Mediterranean, covered with pictures of machine guns.
The New York Times revealed that UNRWA was allowing 25,000 Palestinian Arab youngsters to use their schools as military training camps; children, ages 8 to 16, were trained in the preparation of Molotov cocktails and roadside bombs. John F. Burns, Palestinian Summer Camp Offers the Games of War, The New York Times,August 3, 2000, p. 1.
The Boston Globe described an UNRWA food distribution center in Beach Camp, Gaza, decorated with murals of exploding Israeli boats and burning jeeps. Shawn Cohen, The Refugee Dilemma: A Day in the UNRWA Arab Refugee Camps,Washington Jewish Week, July 23, 1997.
IDF Colonel (ret.) Yoni Fighel, a former military governor in the territories, provided information in the course of an interview with Reform Judaism Magazine. “As long as UNRWA employees are members of Fatah, Hamas, or PFLP, they are going to pursue the interests of their party within the framework of their job
Who’s going to check up on them to see that they don’t?
In an interview on CNN, 2/22/2002, Arafat confidant Ghassan Khatib remarked that every young man in the UNRWA Balata refugee camp has his own personal weapon. This was because the local steering committee, an official UNRWA body, had voted that charitable
donations received would be used for guns rather than food or other relief.
Some it was more official:
The fact, for example, that Hamas convened a conference in a school in the Jabalya refugee camp, in which the school’s administration, teachers and hundreds of students participated was reported on the website of the Israeli prime minister. Hamas leader
Sheikh Yassin presented his ideological doctrine to the junior high school students present. Saheil Alhinadi, representing the teaching sector on behalf of UNRWA, praised Hamas student activists who carried out suicide attacks against Israel.
Dr. Dore Gold, former Israel Ambassador to the UN, was in Jenin in April 2002 and himself witnessed the presence of shahid (martyr) posters on the walls in the homes of UNRWA workers. “It was clear,” he says, “that UNRWA workers were doubling as Hamas agents.
A special intelligence report, released in December 2002, provided considerable information with regard to what had been uncovered. Reuven Ehrlich, Ph.D., Editor,"Special Information Paper,” Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at the Center for Special Studies, December 2002.
1. A number of wanted terrorists were found hiding inside schools run by UNRWA.
2. A large number of youth clubs operated by UNRWA in the refugee camps were discovered to be meeting places for terrorists. For example, the UNRWA youth club at the Jabalaya refugee camp was a gathering place for Tanzim activists.
3. In the al-Arub refugee camp near Hebron, an official bureau of the Tanzim was established inside a building owned by UNRWA.
4. Ala a Muhammad Ali Hassan, a Tanzim “activist” from Nablus, who was arrested in February 2002, confessed that he had carried out a sniper shooting from the school run by UNRWA in the al-Ayn refugee camp near Nablus. He also told his interrogators that bombs intended for terrorist attacks were being manufactured inside that school’s facilities.
3. Nidal Abd al-Fattah Abdallah Nazzal, a Hamas activist from Kalkilya, was arrested in August 2002. Nidal, an ambulance driver employed by UNRWA, confessed during his interrogation that he had transported weapons and explosives in an UNRWA ambulance to terrorists, and that he had taken advantage of the freedom of movement he enjoyed to transmit messages among Hamas activists in various Palestinian towns.
