Relatives of Victims of Hamas attacks in Israel filed a lawsuit against the UN agency for Palestinian refugees on Mondayalleging that UNRWA facilitated unprecedented carnage, according to court documents.
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UNRWA, which coordinates virtually all aid in Gaza, has been in Israel’s crosshairs since January, when The Hebrew country denounced that a dozen of its 13,000 employees participated in the attacks in which 1,200 people died, most civilians.
Such accusations led several governments, including the United States, to suspend aid to the agency, threatening its efforts to deliver aid to the Strip, although several have resumed funding.
Kibbutz after the massacre
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The plaintiffs – who are seeking $1 billion in damages from the UN agency – maintain that UNRWA, as well as several directors of the organization included in the complaint, “spent more than a decade before the October 7 attack helping Hamas to build the terrorist infrastructure and personnel necessary to carry out” this unprecedented attack.
The UN organization “knowingly provided Hamas with the US dollars in cash it needed to pay smugglers for weapons, explosives and other terrorist material,” according to the complainants.
An independent investigation, led by former French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna, acknowledged that there were “neutrality” issues among some officials at the organization, but concluded that Israel had not provided evidence for its accusations.
UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini, one of the defendants, has repeated that Israel “must end its campaign against UNRWA.”
Philippe Lazzarini during a UN Security Council meeting on UNRWA.
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“The war in Gaza has produced blatant disregard for the United Nations mission, including outrageous attacks on (UNRWA) employees, facilities and operations,” Lazzarini wrote in an op-ed published by the New York Times last month.
The lawsuit, which The Times of Israel says runs to 167 pages, includes seven former and current UNRWA leaders. They include, for example, Pierre Krähenbühl, Filippo Grandi, Leni Stenseth and Sandra Mitchell.
“The resulting atrocities were foreseeable and the defendants are responsible for aiding and abetting Hamas’ genocide, crimes against humanity and torture,” the text of the lawsuit reads.
The complaint was filed in New York because UNRWA uses the city’s banking services, argue the plaintiffs’ attorneys, represented by two law firms, one in New York and one in Chicago.
Demonstrations for early elections and for the government to do more to free the hostages held by Hamas have been increasing in recent weeks.
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“Virtually all of the money UNRWA has spent to help Hamas build its terrorist infrastructure in Gaza came from an account in New York in the JPMorgan Chase bank that came to her as a result of the trips that the defendants made to New York to solicit it from donors,” they add.
UNRWA did not respond to the request for information.
In the attacks, Palestinian militants took 251 hostages, of whom 116 remain in their hands in the Gaza Strip, according to Israeli authorities. The Israeli military maintains that of these, 42 have died, including at least 9 soldiers.
The Israeli military operation in Gaza after the attacks has claimed the lives of at least 37,626 people, most of them civilians, according to the Health Ministry of Hamas, which governs the territory.
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