UNRWA Chief Accuses Israel of Torturing Staff as US Backs Ban on Agency at World Court
Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
Nearly 300 UNRWA workers have been killed in Israeli attacks since October 2023, and dozens of other agency staffers have alleged torture during Israel Defense Forces detention.
As the International Court of Justice this week weighs an Israeli ban on a United Nations agency that provides lifesaving aid in Gaza, the program’s leader called out attacks on its workers while the United States defended Israel—the recipient of billions of dollars in U.S. military assistance.
The ICJ is holding a week of hearings in The Hague, Netherlands following the U.N. General Assembly’s December passage of a Norwegian-led resolution asking the tribunal, which is also known as the World Court, for an advisory opinion on Israel’s legal obligation to “ensure and facilitate the unhindered provision of urgently needed supplies essential to the survival of the Palestinian civilian population.”
Among the 38 nations and three regional blocs scheduled to address the 15 ICJ judges, only the United States and Hungary have so far defended Israel, whose forces have killed nearly 300 United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) workers during their nearly 19-month annihilation of Gaza.
“An occupational power retains a margin of appreciation concerning which relief schemes to permit,” U.S. State Department legal adviser Joshua Simmons argued before the court Wednesday, referring to Israel’s 58-year occupation of Palestine, which the ICJ ruled an illegal form of apartheid in a June 2024 advisory opinion.
“Even if an organization offering relief is an impartial humanitarian organization, and even if it is a major actor, occupation law does not compel an occupational power to allow and facilitate that specific actor’s relief operations,” Simmons continued, noting “serious concerns about UNRWA’s impartiality, including information that Hamas has used UNRWA facilities and that UNRWA staff participated in the October 7th terrorist attack against Israel” in 2023.
“Given these concerns, it is clear that Israel has no obligation to permit UNRWA specifically to provide humanitarian assistance,” Simmons added. “UNRWA is not the only option for providing humanitarian assistance in Gaza.”
In what UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini described at the time as an act of “reverse due process,” the agency fired nine employees in February 2024 following Israeli allegations that they were involved in the Hamas-led attack on Israel in which more than 1,100 Israelis were killed and 251 Israeli and foreign survivors were kidnapped.
Lazzarini admitted to terminating the staffers without due process or an adequate investigation of Israel’s claims. A subsequent probe by the U.N. Office of Oversight Services “was not able to independently authenticate information used by Israel to support the allegations.”
On Tuesday, Lazzarini reminded the world that “over 50 UNRWA staff—among them teachers, doctors, social workers—have been detained and abused” by Israeli forces since October 2023.
“They have been treated in the most shocking and inhumane way,” he continued. “They reported being beaten up and used as human shields. They were subjected to sleep deprivation, humiliation, threats of harm to them and their families, and attacks by dogs. Many were subjected to forced confessions.”
Those forced confessions spurred numerous nations including the United States to cut off funding to UNRWA. Almost all of the countries have since restored funding as Israel’s claims have been debunked or questioned over a lack of evidence.
The U.S.—which has not restored funding for UNRWA—earlier this week abandoned its long-standing position that the body is immune from lawsuits, opening the door for cases by October 7 survivors and victims’ relatives stemming from dubious claims of agency involvement in the attack.
In addition to accusing Israeli troops of torturing its staffers, UNRWA has also documented tortures allegedly suffered by Palestinians imprisoned by Israel, including interrupted drowning—also known as waterboarding—being shot in the knees with nail guns, sexual abuse of both men and women, and being sodomized with electric batons. The Israel Defense Forces is investigating dozens of in-custody deaths, many of them at the notorious Sde Teiman base in the Negev Desert.
While Israel’s physical assault on Gaza has killed hundreds of UNRWA workers, its diplomatic war on the U.N. has seen the agency banned from operating in Palestine and U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres declared “persona non grata” in Israel after he included Israel on his 2024 “list of shame” of countries and armed groups that kill and injure children during wartime.
The U.S.-backed 572-day war waged by the far-right government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who is a fugitive from the International Criminal Court—has left more than 184,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing in Gaza, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Nearly all of the embattled enclave’s more than 2 million people have been forcibly displaced and Israel’s “complete siege” of the coastal strip has fueled widespread starvation and illness.
This week’s ICJ hearing comes amid the tribunal’s ongoing genocide case against Israel, which was brought by South Africa and is backed by dozens of nations either individually or via regional blocs. The court has issued three provisional orders in the case, all of which Israel has been accused of flouting.
Responding to the U.S. intervention in this week’s ICJ hearings, Palestinian Ambassador to the Netherlands Ammar Hijazi told Middle East Eye that “everybody knows that Israel is using humanitarian aid as a weapon of war and is starving the population in Gaza because of that.”
U.N. agencies and international humanitarian groups have warned in recent days of the imminent risk of renewed famine in Gaza as food stocks run out.
“The U.S. intervention is very narrow in its scope, when it highlights the rights of an occupying power but ignores the so many layers of duties of that occupying power that Israel is in violation of,” Hijazi added.
Among the countries defending UNRWA during Wednesday’s ICJ session were Indonesia and Russia, which is currently waging a war against Ukraine. Indonesian Foreign Minister Sugiono affirmed “the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination,” while Maksim Musikhin, legal director of Russia’s Foreign Ministry, argued that “international law should be respected by Israel” and that UNRWA deserves a Nobel Peace Prize.
Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
