US intelligence has ‘low confidence’ in some of Israel’s UNRWA claims, report says

A US intelligence assessment of Israel’s claims that UN aid agency staff members participated in the Hamas attack on 7 October said some of the accusations were credible but that the claims of wider links to militant groups could not be independently verified.

The assault precipitated a full-scale invasion by Israel of Gaza that has killed upwards of 30,000 Palestinians. Earlier this year, Israel accused 12 employees of the United Nations Reliefs and Works Agency (UNRWA) of participating in the 7 October attacks alongside Hamas. It also said 10% of all UNRWA workers were affiliated with Hamas.

The bombshell accusation led several countries, including the US, to cut off funding for the agency, which was a crucial vehicle for getting aid to Gaza in what has widely been described as a humanitarian crisis.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the intelligence report, released last week, declared it had “low confidence” in the basic claim that a handful of staff had participated in the attack, indicating that it considered the accusations to be credible though it could not independently confirm their veracity.

It cast doubt, however, on accusations that the UN agency was collaborating with Hamas in a wider way. The Journal said the report mentioned that although UNRWA does coordinate with Hamas in order to deliver aid and operate in the region, there was a lack of evidence to suggest it partnered with the group.

It added that Israel has not “shared the raw intelligence behind its assessments with the US”.

Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, said in January that Israel’s accusations were “highly, highly credible”. Nine of the staff accused were sacked by the head of agency, who said he followed “reverse due process” in doing so. Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner general of UNRWA, told a press conference in Jerusalem earlier in February that he had not investigated the evidence before the firing.

“I could have suspended them, but I have fired them. And now I have an investigation, and if the investigation tells us that this was wrong, in that case at the UN we will take a decision on how to properly compensate [them],” he said.

On Wednesday, Lazzarini told Haaretz that the agency was asking Israel to “fully cooperate to provide the evidence to the investigation team”.