The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, facing explosive allegations of ties with Hamas, is struggling to preserve its reputation and maintain its lifesaving operations in Gaza, as Israel threatens to invade the enclave’s last refuge for displaced civilians.
Political pressure on the U.N. Relief and Works Agency mounted further on Saturday after Israel said it had uncovered a tunnel passing under UNRWA’s main headquarters in Gaza City. The Israeli military posted pictures of what it called an electrical supply hub powering a vast Hamas underground network in the area and said “large quantities of weapons” had been recovered there.
UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said Saturday that the agency had no knowledge of the underground tunnel and had neither the “military and security expertise nor the capacity” to conduct military-grade inspections of the premises. Israel, he added, had not formally notified UNRWA of the findings under the compound, which staff evacuated on Oct. 12 amid Israeli bombardment.
“Oh, you knew,” COGAT, an arm of the Israeli Defense Ministry, fired back on X. “You chose to ignore the facts so you can later try and deny them.”
UNRWA has been under intense scrutiny since late last month, when Israel alleged that 12 of its employees were involved in the Oct. 7 attack led by Hamas, in which gunmen killed 1,200 people in southern Israel and took more than 250 hostages. Six of the agency’s employees were alleged to have crossed into Israel on Oct. 7 and four were involved in kidnapping Israelis, according to an intelligence dossier compiled by the Israeli government and reviewed by The Washington Post. The document did not lay out evidence against the accused.
