UNRWA official: Our slain colleagues are not Hamas members

[Donkees]

The communications director of the UN’s Palestine relief agency UNRWA, Juliette Touma, has told Al Jazeera that there is no basis for Isarel’s claims that staff of the organisation are Hamas members.

“These are colleagues of ours, these are teachers, doctors, sanitation workers, support staff, the backbone of the organisation, and they have all been vetted, they all been cleared, not only by the UN,” she said, explaining that lists of UNRWA staff members are also shared with the Israeli government.

On Friday, Israel’s ambassador to the UN said that “many UNRWA workers in Gaza are themselves members of Hamas”.

Touma confirmed that more than 100 of her colleagues have been killed in Gaza since October 7.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2023/11/11/israel-hamas-war-live-pleas-for-help-as-israel-bombards-gaza-hospitals

[Igel]

1. UNRWA says they're not members.

And there's no basis for any other claim.

But they give the list of their folk to Israel.

Wanted conclusion: Israel knows them, they're vetted, and they're not Hamas.

Other possible conclusion: Israel vetted them themselves and some are Hamas members.

Needed to rule out the second possibility--Does Israel have veto rights over employees, upon hiring or at any time after employment begins?

They get to cross the ts, dot the is, and finish the last section of the dike. Tracking down that info strikes me as a rabbit hole of indeterminate depth.

[gulliver]

2. The last bunch of these Al Jazeera (Qatar government) links I've seen don't work

You get to the site, and it's one of these minute-by-minute update pages. You can't find UNRWA on it, for example. Al-Jazeera is absurdly bad as a news source.