Israeli officials have reportedly refused to cooperate with a UN investigation into the allegations against UNRWA.
Canadian officials have still not seen any evidence backing up Israel’s allegations against Palestinians’ foremost aid agency despite being one of the first countries to suspend their funding to the group amid one of the most dire humanitarian crises in modern times.
Sources within the Canadian government say that Israel has not provided any evidence backing up claims made in an Israeli intelligence document which accused a dozen employees of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) of having an affiliation with Hamas forces, CBC reported Wednesday.
Recent reports have found that a six-page dossier that many countries have used as the basis for cutting off funding to the crucial agency does not back up the allegations, with multiple outlets across different countries reporting as such; Channel 4, in the U.K., reported that there is “no evidence to support” the claims. Sky News reported that even if the claims were true, they “do not directly implicate UNRWA.”
The agency swiftly fired several of the employees facing accusations last month, a decision that the agency made in reaction to the severity of the claims and not due to evidence of the allegations themselves.
Despite the lack of evidence, however, 16 countries have cut off funding to the agency, including its top two donors, the U.S. and Germany. Like U.S. officials, the Canadian government announced that it was suspending funding to the UNRWA just after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered Israel to curtail its merciless military campaign in Gaza, which was already “plausibly” a genocide, the court said.