‏צוותים של עירית עזה מפעילים, לפינוי כבישים מפסולת בנין - טקטורים עם דגלי קטר.

This is exactly why Israel has always refused requests from the Authority and Palestinian banks to bring dollars in cash into Gaza. G., a legal advisor at the National Security Council, quoted in one of the WikiLeaks documents as responsible for drafting the regulations to prevent cash transfers to Gaza, explained it well: "Cash bills, especially dollars, fuel the smuggling economy and contribute to Hamas's capabilities."

Israel ignored pleas from the American administration and said "no" even to Quartet representative Tony Blair, who repeatedly demanded that it transfer dollars due to liquidity problems in Gaza's banks. Under pressure, Israel yielded to the American administration's urgings, which also enlisted Stanley Fischer and with Ehud Barak's approval, to occasionally allow trucks of shekels to increase liquidity in the banks, but every request to transfer dollars was firmly refused. Except for UNRWA.

UNRWA devised a method that no Israeli entity could resist. As a humanitarian organization, UNRWA claims that the scope of salaries it pays in Gaza is $13.5 million per month. This is, of course, an exaggerated amount that approaches the organization's entire monthly budget in Gaza (a budget that mainly includes food and humanitarian supplies arriving through Israel and not produced in Gaza). Beyond that, every month the organization claims there is "not enough cash" in the banks, and it must transfer a truck loaded with bills from the Bank of Palestine branch in Ramallah to the Bank of Palestine branch in Gaza.

In this way, UNRWA has brought into Gaza a staggering sum of $890 million in cash since Operation Cast Lead. Of course, this money does not circulate in the Gazan system but has fallen, among other things, into the hands of Hamas's smuggling mechanism.

Israel must immediately inform UNRWA that it will no longer allow any cash transfers into Gaza that enable Hamas to pay for deals the organization prefers to hide. The Strip's banking system is not properly supervised, and money also leaks from it to Hamas—but we should not make the job easier by bringing in dollar cash. UNRWA has several options to pay its people in Gaza: it can make bank transfers and withdraw shekels from the Gazan banking system, or distribute debit cards to its employees. There are additional options like distributing salaries in the organization's food vouchers. In addition, Israel must investigate itself: how did it happen that for over five years we allowed UNRWA to deceive us and bring more and more dollars into Gaza—nearly a billion dollars.

From UNRWA, a response was provided: "At the end of each month, we transfer $13.5 million from Bank of Palestine in Ramallah to Bank of Palestine in Gaza. All the money is intended for the salaries of UNRWA's staff members. The procedure has been in place for years. It is done transparently and with the knowledge, approval, and full cooperation of the Israeli authorities. Bank of Palestine is accepted by the Israeli authorities as the appropriate entity to conduct this activity through. This has not raised issues regarding our neutrality or complaints about misuse of funds until now."

🧵An Article I wrote on 2014.
English Translation.
Published in Maariv

How UNRWA Fuels the Terror Industry in the Strip ?

By Eyal Ofer
August 10, 2014

The fighters of "Maglan" could not have anticipated the inferno awaiting them in the clinic marked with a blue sign as "UNRWA Clinic" in Khan Yunis. On the surface, it was a medical building constructed by an official UN agency, whose sole purpose is to care for Palestinian refugees.

The building, unlike its surroundings, was situated in a well-maintained garden, with clean plaster and paint, free of wires or any other signs indicating explosives. Even the dog sent in to sniff for explosives detected no danger. When the soldiers entered the clinic, a massive charge was remotely detonated, causing the building to collapse. Three fighters lost their lives, and about 15 were seriously injured. It turned out that in the clinic's basement, a tunnel shaft had been dug, and 12 massive charges, each weighing 80 kg, were hidden in the walls. The explosion, with the force of a ton of explosives, flung a nearby IDF D-9 bulldozer as if it were a toy tractor.

On the same day, a UNRWA spokesperson appeared on "Al Jazeera" and cried live on air over what he called "the harm to Palestinians and their children." Of course, he did not mention the injured IDF soldiers. In his eyes, they have no parents, siblings, or girlfriends waiting for their return.

How does a clinic built by UNRWA serve as a hiding place with powerful charges embedded in its walls?

UNRWA is the third-largest employer in the Strip after the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, and it turns out that most of its employees in Gaza—more than 10,000 people—are affiliated with Hamas and jihadist organizations. In fact, it's hard to get a job at UNRWA without connections to Islamic organizations. 25 out of 27 representatives on UNRWA's workers' committee are from the Islamic coalition controlled by Hamas.

UNRWA does not try to deny or prevent this. Awad al-Qiq, the principal of a UNRWA school in Rafah, was an active member of a rocket-assembly squad and was killed when Israel bombed the workshops where it operated. Al-Qiq's involvement in terrorism was exposed two years before his elimination, when he was the target of a failed targeted killing. But this changed nothing for UNRWA. In response to a question on the matter, UNRWA stated that it "does not check the political affiliation" of its employees. Even Saeed Siyam, one of the leaders of Hamas's operational force, who led the takeover of the Strip in 2007 and was Hamas's first interior minister—worked for 21 years in UNRWA's school system alongside his membership in Hamas.

During the fighting, UNRWA repeatedly discovered "in surprise" rockets hidden within the walls of schools under its responsibility. UNRWA acted vigorously and instructed its employees to "leave the premises" until the weapons were removed by the "local police." In this case too, the organization's spokesperson explained that it is not UNRWA's role to investigate whose rockets they were or what happened to them—after all, they are just a "humanitarian organization." In the name of this humanitarianism, UNRWA does business in Gaza, and its leaders have even declared that they work with local professionals and merchants to stimulate the Gazan economy.

The Truck from Ramallah

Every terrorist organization, and especially Hamas operating in an "economic island" cut off from the rest of the world, needs untraceable and uncontrollable foreign currency. In other words: green bills.

Dollars are not needed by Hamas for its activities inside Gaza. There, it manages, through various taxes, to get its hands on hundreds of millions of shekels. Although the cost of weapons is paid (outside Gaza) to arms manufacturers and dealers with funds funneled from Iran and Qatar, Hamas needs cash to pay the smugglers who bring the goods to Gaza's border.

Part 2 next: