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Breakdown and IntroductionAt the beginning of November, Col. Nir Press, of the IDF’s Gaza Coordination and Liaison Administration, registered a complaint with the United Nations Relief and Welfare Agency (UNWRA) regarding the use by terrorists of an UNRWA school in Beit Hanoun on October 31 for shooting mortars. The IDF has aerial photos from an unmanned vehicle that showed the terrorists shooting from the school. Israel did not fire at the school in return.[1]
John Ging, Director of UNRWA Operations in Gaza, responded[2] that the masked terrorists had gained entry into the school after threatening the life of the guard.
Karen AbuZayd, Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations who has been UNRWA's Deputy Commissioner-General since August, however, told the press a different story: She said that all teachers and students and the one guard employed at the school had been moved out following an Israeli incursion into the area. According to her, UNRWA only discovered militants had been inside the school after seeing television footage a week ago. "This is a problem when we're not there, what happens to our schools," she said.
She does not explain what happened to the guard whose life was threatened.
UN Secretary-General Ki Moon is sufficiently concerned about this incident to have now ordered an investigation.
This particular incident has not occurred in isolation, however, and must be set into fuller context:
Background:
Before September 2005
UNRWRA and terrorism in Gaza
The connections of the UNRWA refugee camps in Gaza to terrorism – and specifically to Hamas – date back well beyond recent events.
The genesis of radicalism in the UNRWA camps was traced by these authors in March 2003.[3] A state of indefinite, stateless limbo, the impression that Israel was denying them their “inalienable right to return,”[4] and unsatisfactory living conditions all promoted anger and a move to a radical stance. Added to this was (and is) an educational system that in Gaza, as well as in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) , utilizes Palestinian Authority textbooks that promote jihad and deny the legitimacy of Israel as a Jewish state.
Evidence of radicalism in the UNRWA camps was apparent – but largely ignored – for some years:
A full ten years ago, UNRWA schools were seen decorated with Hamas graffiti and a map of a Palestine that ran from the river to the sea, covered with pictures of machine guns.[5]
An UNRWA food distribution center in Beach Camp, Gaza, was reported to be “decorated with murals of exploding Israeli boats and burning jeeps.” At a nearby boys elementary school “posters glorifying suicide bombers” were stripped from classroom walls.[6]
IDF Colonel (ret.) Yoni Fighel, a former military governor in the territories, gave testimony in 2002 to the fact that UNRWA employees were members of Hamas.[7]
By 2003, it was clear that “the UNRWA camps have become centers of terrorist activities. It is often in the camps that terrorists are recruited, trained, and dispatched, and weapons manufactured; camps (and UNRWA facilities) are utilized for hiding terrorists and weapons. Camps provide a safe haven for terrorists from outside, while residents of the camps themselves are involved in terrorist activities.”[8]
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As in the days of Noah...
