URNWA - Hamas investigation. Thread 2

[EasterIssland]

Hi.
The previous thread finished on the weekend and a new one hasn’t been opened yet so thought I’d open it finished after some information released by idf about Hamas data center being under urnwa hq

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/conflict-in-the-middle-east/4995041-to-find-the-silence-about-unrwa-being-hamas-hypocritical

‘Palestine refugees are not distinct from other refugees in protracted refugee situations such as those from Afghanistan or Somalia, where there are multiple generations of refugees, registered by UNHCR as refugees and supported as such. Protracted refugee situations are the result of the failure to find political solutions to their underlying political crises.’

@Scirocco
'Your post is saying that it’s ok to hold on to land taken by conquest and, by inference , ok for Israel to thwart a two state solution.
Israel is a sovereign recognised country.'

Yes it is. The Occupied Territories are... Occupied. By Israel. It might be nice if the people there could have sovereignty too. Disputed territories, that Israel has been willing to concede since 1967 ( subject to land swaps) in 2000 and 2008. Gaza has not been occupied since 2005.

'Why wouldn’t Palestinians gravitate toward Iran or Russia or anyone else who will support them in trying to get their land back if the only way is by conquest.
You have to be a bit more specific with your incredibly vague posts. What land are you talking about? Gaza? The West Bank? Or Israel?'

Maybe having a sovereign Palestinian state, free from occupation, could be a way of making it possible for Palestinians to have homes and safety from persecution, alongside some sort of recompense for the suffering inflicted upon them by decades of occupation and oppression.

At every point in history Palestinians have said no to a state of their own. Why? Throughout history from 1947 when given the choice of attacking, delegitimising, or working towards the destruction of Israel OR having a state of their own they have chosen the former.
Whenever these two goals have come into conflict, the first - the destruction of Israel (through the ‘right’ of return) has won out over the second of having a state.

'Israeli policy for decades has been to do anything to avoid a political two state solution
This is utterly untrue. Please read up on the peace negotiations from 2000 and 2008.'

It kind of is true. Kicking the ball into the long grass isn't progress, it's just making something tomorrow's problem rather than resolving it today.
Please explain, how your statement explains Israeli participation in both of the peace negotiations and willingness to negotiate after 1967 war is considered kicking the ball into the long grass.

'-the pullout from Gaza was not remotely self determination
Gaza did have self determination how else do you think Hamas the governing body were able to build a terror tunnel city?'

Gaza is still recognised as having been under occupation even once the Israeli settlements there were removed. Having experience of Gaza, what they had there was a very long way from self-determination.
Hamas co-founder Mahmoud Zahar confirmed in 2012 there was no Israeli occupation of Gaza.
Hamas ran its own police, courts, jails, schools, media and social services. Hamas regulated business activities, banks and land registries. It levied taxes, controlled its own border with Egypt and even imposed a dress code. It was a functioning and fully independent local civil government, buttressed by armed forces.
The international law of occupation requires that a hostile army have "effective control" over a territory in an area where its authority can be exercised, and to the exclusion of the territory's established government. The UN considers it occupied, in reality it was not.
Borders of Gaza. Hamas along with Egypt, controlled the Rafah border before October 2023. 352,000 Gazans left and returned to Gaza (equal to 35% of population) between January and June 2023. Hamas published a daily roster of exit permits.

They don't have a 'terror tunnel city'. They have a tunnel network, plenty of bits of which were already there. Lots of urban areas do have tunnel networks, by the way, this isn't a thing that's unique to Gaza.
Lots of countries do have a tunnel network, the tube for example and I’m sure there were some tunnels before 2005 however, Hamas dramatically expanded the tunnel network built specifically for warfare over a 19 year period and is longer than the London tube. Taking away materials which should have been earmarked for the benefit of their population.

@PeasfullPerson

Palestine refugees are not distinct from other refugees in protracted refugee situations such as those from Afghanistan or Somalia, where there are multiple generations of refugees, registered by UNHCR as refugees and supported as such. Protracted refugee situations are the result of the failure to find political solutions to their underlying political crises.’

Here is where the sleight of hand comes in. Of course it is possible for there to be multiple generations of refugees by UNHCR, IF the multiple generations all fit the primary 1951 definition of a refugee. For example, if the granddaughter of a refugee is also outside the country of her nationality due to a well founded fear of being persecuted, she too is a primary refugee. But she is NOT a refugee due to descent, because there is no provision for refugee status based on descent in the 1951 refugee convention or in internationally accepted practices for refugees who are not Palestinian refugees.

Almost all of Jordan’s 2.2 million UNRWA-designated refugees would lose their status under UNHCR criteria, as would most of Syria’s 560,000 and just under half of Lebanon’s 521,000. All 2.17 million UNRWA-designated refugees in Gaza, the West Bank would lose that status were those areas to become parts of a sovereign Palestinian state.

https://www.wired.com/story/israel-unrwa-usa-hamas-google-search-ads/

"The ad Shaheen saw is in Arabic and describes Hamas as having the ability to end the war by releasing hostages and ceding control over Gaza. She flagged it in the YouTube app as problematic."

Problematic! Suggesting the freeing the hostages might help end the war. Bizarre someone might complain that, freeing hostages might help as being 'problematic'.

id Think That “ceding control over Gaza. ” might be the problematic bit if they’re suggesting they need to give control over to Israel

"Ceding control over Gaza" is a potentially problematic concept - ceding to whom?

It's also rather 'problematic' to have any government using ads in that way as part of propaganda - with the problematic bit being the method of communication and the effects of that on people who encounter it, rather than the part of the message that pretty much everyone is in agreement with.

Should governments buy commercial ad time/space for conflict-related propaganda? It's quite different from a charity advertising campaigns to help people in need, or from public health media campaigns.

How are those adverts targeted and what does that mean for the people seeing it in terms of their personal data? What does that mean for users of the products on which those ads appear?

What is the purpose of the ad campaigns? What is actually being achieved by presenting messages like "Hamas must cede control over Gaza" in adverts by the Israeli government, in Arabic, presumably primarily to be seen by people who understand Arabic? One possible answer to that question is: Intimidation.

That's problematic.

I’ve said in the past. I’ve been targeted already 3 times with ads by the Israeli government in another website with their propaganda

someone told me it’s because of my search history. True. Probably because i read about the conflict but def I’m not their right target as I don’t believe any of their lies.

its also a problem that these ads (the ones of the link) are about urnwa and being terrorists. Israel has still failed to proof this accusation. Why spend money trying to convince the world about it when they could easily prove it with their investigation when they accused URNWA of being terrorists

Because they are lying and they are desperate.

We haven’t seen the original ad never mind a reliable translation. However, Netanyahu is documented as saying”“The idea that we will stop the war before achieving all its aims is not an option”.

I think the ads are part of the Israeli justification for killing so many civilians- it’s a variation of “ you made us do it” narrative that runs along the line of “ The bombardment would stop if they just released the hostages.”

There are about half a dozen different tacks starting with exaggerating the scale of depravity of Hamas( as if that were needed), denying the scale of the humanitarian catastrophe, discrediting critics of the Israeli government, etc etc but as denial gets harder, Israel is clearly finding it harder and harder to make any case justifying their actions. But it’s a very Trumpian approach- keep saying the war will end if the hostages are released and those who want to will believe it. But in reality, Netanyahu is sacrificing the surviving hostages for his other war objectives.

Philippe:
There is a deliberate attempt to eliminate and dismantle the agency and the reason behind that has nothing to do with neutrality issues, but there is a political purpose behind it. Ultimately there is a desire to strip the Palestinians of refugee status and beyond that to undermine the future Palestinian aspiration for self-determination. That is why Unrwa has become such a target.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/sep/13/israel-seeking-to-close-down-unrwa-philippe-lazzarini-school-bombing

An employee of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, was killed by a sniper in the West Bank amid ongoing Israeli military operations, the agency said Frida

https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20240913-rare-death-of-un-worker-as-israel-pursues-west-bank-operation

1. Hamas' announcement that its leader in Lebanon Fathi Sherif al-Amin was killed.
2. The head of UNRWA's teachers union Fathi Sherif al-Amin was killed

Oh. dear…
This time it is not maybe, could have, likely, highly likely to have been Hamas.
No. Fathi al-Sharif was Hamas.

This time Lazzarini declares he didn’t know! Or didn’t know he was a commander! Perhaps it is okay to be local Hamas?

Lazzarini could have just asked Hamas or checked out his public Facebook page.

What I found really interesting, UNRWA teachers utter support of their UNRWA teaching union head when he had been suspended because he was accused of being Hamas.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/unrwa-chief-says-he-did-not-know-suspended-employee-was-hamass-leader-in-lebanon/

Ok, so 1 in 32,000 employees was a member of Hamas and this was discovered months after he’d been suspended at the time of his death.

Why are you suprised Lazarini did not know? Do you honestly think that Lazzarini personally knows all 32,000 of his subordinates? Add a normal organisations’ turnover rate, and that 32,000 is not a fixed pool of people as several hundred employees would be hired or leaving employment daily. He ordered the investigation that identified the 9 suspected, of which 1 is now known. It is ridiculous to imply he has been purposefully hiring or harbouring Hamas.

You do know that UNRWA sends the name & details of every potential employee to the Israeli government prior to hiring as part of their background checks? And each employee has their background check renewed annually? And that UNRWA acts on any information from Israel? This process was put into place in 2006.

This is a very robust procedure thanks to Israeli intelligence being so good and it is a huge success story to have had only 9 suspected and of these, only 1 confirmed so far to be Hamas out of 32,000 employees.

It is just unfortunate that it is being misused to attack UNRWA as an organisation. Anyone operating in the OPT will accidentally hire a terrorist or hire someone who is later radicalised now and then. Even governments with the best intelligence (and Israel is no exception) have accidentally hired spies from time to time. Like the recent case of the British security guard at the U.K. Embassy in Berlin who sold secrets to Russia. Would you similarly act shocked that the then Foreign Secretary, James Cleverly, did not know his department had hired a spy for Putin’s Russia? And conclude that the entire U.K. FCDO is riddled with Putin’s agents such that it is an arm of Russia?

Apply some common sense please.

There is evidence IDF has a yet to be identified Hamas spy in its midst:

”Hamas may have used a spy to scout out an IDF base on the Gaza border while planning its October 7 assault on southern Israel, an Israeli intelligence source told The Guardian, basing himself on a map recovered after the fighting.”

”The IDF has noted in press briefings that Hamas possessed intelligence about the location of the homes of the security chiefs in the different kibbutzim and aimed to strike at them at the start of each attack.”- this is the kind of secure information that only members of the IDF would have.
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-12-05/ty-article/hamas-may-have-used-spy-to-scout-idf-base-before-oct-7-attack-report-says/0000018c-3980-de12-a3af-3bcdbc260000

But IDF isn’t an arm of Hamas, either now is it? Despite clear evidence that insider knowledge from an unidentified Hamas spy in the IDF was used to plan the Oct 7th attack.

Exactly. Once a refugee has the protection of another country through citizenship they are no longer considered a refugee, I.e. in need of international protection. Unless Palestinian

As unrwa later says, that's not unrwa's fault but they also aren't exactly open about it.

Apparently unrwa can't be merged with unhcr due to budget lines???

@SugarandSpiceandAllThingsNaice
9 suspected? The 9 were fired. Don’t you remember that you stated that fact up thread just before you made up scenarios of what they could be fired for (lending a terrorist a motorbike).
I then highlighted that UN spokesman Farhan Haq acknowledged that the 9 were highly likely part of the attacks. Fathi al-Sharif was not part of the 9, but nice try in trying incorporate him as such.

However, it doesn’t matter whether all of UNRWA is part of or sympathetic to Hamas. That is not why it should be defunded/dismantled
It should be dismantled because UNRWA is the ideological backbone that gives birth decade after decade, generation after generation to the idea of return. It keeps the Palestinian forever war going against the Jews being sovereign in any part of the land.
It counts 5.9 million refugees.
It has not settled a single refugee in it’s history.
Almost none of them are refugees by International standards.
40% are citizens of Jordan.
40% are in the West Bank and Gaza, somewhere they consider to be Palestine and indeed engage in efforts to have it recognised.
The rest are in Lebanon and Syria of which 2/3 have left and become citizens of other countries.
UNRWA has registered millions of people as refugees over the decades who do not meet the basic criteria applied to EVERY other group of refugees in the world. It seeks not to settle refugees but in registering millions of refugees its desire is to keep the 1948 war going.
Had the rest of the world been recognised as refugees in the same way as UNRWA does for the Palestinians the (relative) peace that has marked much of the world since WWII would have been replaced by constant war.
This is the reason why UNRWA should be dismantled/ defunded.

I’m not sure your figures are correct in respect to Jordan. The only Palestinian refugees that Jordan gave citizenship to were the ones originally displaced from the 1948 Nakba into the West Bank which Jordan held until 1967. After 1988, a further nationality law barred even these Palestinian refugees who had actually applied for and gotten citizenship from passing their Jordanian citizenship on to their descendants.

Palestinian refugees first displaced into Gaza in 1948 and then fled to West Bank or Jordan post 1954 also did not get Jordanian citizenship because Gaza was under Egyptian administration and even today their descendants in Jordan are referred to as “Gazans.”

In addition, every Palestinian refugee arriving in Jordan from 1967 to the present and their descendants have been barred from Jordanian citizenship.

So I find it hard to believe that ‘almost all’ Palestinian refugees in Jordan have Jordanian citizenship.

Palestinians in WB and gaza can get Palestinian citizenship and a state of palestine passport. Ergo they are not refugees by definition (unless Palestinian).

@Alwayslookonthe
Ok so 1 of 10 suspected then has been proven. It’s hard to keep track of who is who amongst the various allegstions. Btw, the “Highly likely” was a spokespersons opinion and isn’t proof of Hamas involvement.

“It should be dismantled because UNRWA is the ideological backbone that gives birth decade after decade, generation after generation to the idea of return.”

I think you will find that the ‘ideological backbone’ to the voluntary right of return is not in UNRWA but in International Human Rights:

The right of persons to leave and to return to their country is the basic tenet underling voluntary repatriation. It is incorporated in international human rights instruments:
The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights at Article 13 (2),

The 1950 European conventions for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental freedoms at Article 2,

The 1965 International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination at Article 5,

The 1976 International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights at Article 12.

You will find you are mistaken if you think dismantling UNRWA will result in the right of return dissolving:
Extract from a Press release from the UN on World Refugee Day
Right of return of Palestinian refugees must be prioritised over political considerations: UN experts
21 June 2023

”Since 1948, both the General Assembly and the Security Council have consistently called upon Israel to facilitate the return of Palestinian refugees and provide reparations. Despite these repeated appeals, Palestinian refugees have been systematically denied of their right to return and forced to live in exile under precarious and vulnerable conditions outside the borders of Palestine. The right of return constitutes a fundamental pillar of the Palestinian people's right to self-determination. The fragmentation of the Palestinian people, both geographically and politically, through administrative methods of control based on residency and race, tantamount to apartheid, has obstructed the realisation of the right to return and self-determination. These practices serve the settler-colonial project pursued by Israel.”
https://www.ohchr.org/en/statements/2023/06/right-return-palestinian-refugees-must-be-prioritised-over-political

There is no Palestinian state, almost every Palestinian in the West Bank and Gaza is technically stateless. There are a few who are Israeli citizens that have been forced to move there by intermarriage since Israel refuses residency permits if an Israeli citizen marries a Palestinian. The children of such unions also are barred from inheriting Israeli citizenship. Their identity and travel documents show their ethnicity and refugee status, not their citizenship.

Do you have any links to support this
“Almost none of them are refugees by International standards.
40% are citizens of Jordan.
40% are in the West Bank and Gaza, somewhere they consider to be Palestine and indeed engage in efforts to have it recognised.
The rest are in Lebanon and Syria of which 2/3 have left and become citizens of other countries.”

??

@SugarandSpiceandAllThingsNaice
Ok so 1 of 10 suspected then has been proven. It’s hard to keep track of who is who amongst the various allegstions. Btw, the “Highly likely” was a spokespersons opinion and isn’t proof of Hamas involvement.

No, Fathi al Sharif was not one of the 9. You seem to be confused.
There were 9 employees of UNRWA fired because they may be, were likely, highly likely involved in the attacks of October 7th. Fathi al- Sharif was in Lebanon so could not maybe, likely, highly likely involved in the attacks.

The 9 weren’t suspected they were fired as you stated upthread when you tried to make up innocent scenarios of why they would have been fired.

So what has Ireland recognised then? A unicorn?

In the Beeri massacre you see unrwa staff clearly caught on camera