Hamas has been operating right under the headquarters of the United Nations aid agency for Palestinians in Gaza.
Israeli Defense Forces announced over the weekend that they had discovered a network of tunnels and a communications hub directly under the server room in the offices of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Gaza City.
UNRWA’s stated mission is to provide aid for some 5.9 million Palestinian refugees within and outside Israel, employing 30,000 people (of which 13,000 in Gaza). In contrast, the UN’s main refugee agency, UNHCR, has fewer than 21,000 employees for over 108 million refugees worldwide. The agency recently lost funding from many UN member states after the revelation that 12 of its employees aided or participated in the October 7th massacre in Israel where Hamas terrorists killed more than 1,200 people and took over 200 hostages.
The network of tunnels runs about half a mile long, with a hub of computer servers that appears to have been siphoning electricity from the UN building. The IDF believes it was used as a base for intelligence gathering, data processing, and communications for the terrorist group. Hard drives and other equipment was taken from the site to Israel for analysis before the IDF demolished the tunnel system.
Col. Benny Aharon of the IDF, one of the Israeli soldiers showing the tunnel system and command center to international journalists, told the Times of Israel that it was located directly beneath the UNRWA server room, with electric cables connecting the two locations. He said,
UNRWA provides cover for Hamas, UNRWA knows exactly what is happening underground, and UNRWA uses its budget to fund some of Hamas’s military capabilities, this is for certain.
Col. Aharon, to prove his point, said the UNRWA server room had been stripped of all its computers and DVRs, and most of the cables running to Hamas’ underground command center had been cut:
Someone who works at UNRWA, who is supposed to care for human rights, to care for the welfare of the population in Gaza, shouldn’t rush to disconnect all the DVRs, the cameras, cut all the wires and take all the computers. These are the actions of someone who knew the army was coming and wanted to hide the evidence.
The headquarters of the UNRWA sits in Gaza City in northern Gaza, an area that came under attack by Israeli Defense Forces early in its campaign against Hamas following the October 7 terrorist attacks.
Staff evacuated the building on October 12th. Since then, the Israeli Defense forces have continued to pursue Hamas, particularly seeking out its underground tunnel systems.
The tunnels, journalists reported, opened up to a larger tiled room with flooring, and air conditioning, holding large batteries that were believed to have provided backup electricity in the event of a power outage. IDF believes this area was used by Hamas IT and intelligence to supervise the data center. The walls in the area had posters with the logo of the Al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ military wing.
The IDF also showed journalists underground living quarters, including bathrooms and a kitchenette, used by Hamas.
The IDF entered the tunnels by excavating a parking lot about half a mile away from the computer hub, next to a UN school that, according to the IDF, also had tunnels snaking under it.
The Israeli military also found caches of weapons in various rooms of the UN building. In a statement, the agency said that it had not returned to the site since October and couldn’t know if Hamas fighters had entered the building in the time since it was abandoned.
Col. Aharon, however, said:
There is no doubt that UNRWA staff knew that [Hamas] was digging a massive tunnel beneath them. … There’s a perimeter wall, a gate, cameras, at the gate they log who comes in and out. Whoever worked at UNRWA knew very well who was coming in, and who they were covering for.
Israel has suspected for years that a Hamas tunnel network lay under the building and says it is again proof of how the terrorist group uses civilians and civilian infrastructure as a shield.
For its part, the UNRWA said in a statement that the reports“merit an independent inquiry,” and that it “does not have the military and security expertise nor the capacity to undertake military inspections of what is or might be under its premises.” The agency said it had filed notifications with both the Hamas government in Gaza and the Israeli government whenever suspicious activity occurred. A spokesman for the organization also, shockingly, denies it had any knowledge that electricity may have been siphoned off to the computer command center, a statement difficult to believe given the amount of electricity the sizable Hamas server room must have required.
In 2014, a parking lot several hundred yards away from the building began sinking, a clue, according to a UNRWA source who spoke with the Wall Street Journal, that something was awry.
James Lindsay, a former legal counsel for the agency, also told the Wall Street Journal that it was unlikely that any international staff would have known about the tunnels under the UNRWA building but that local staff “were far more likely to know, but could have been either sympathetic to the militant group or afraid to denounce the activity.”
In light of the most recent revelation, Israel’s ambassador to the UN has demanded that the director of UNRWA, Philippe Lazzarini, step down and take responsibility for failing to prevent Hamas from developing terrorism infrastructure in UN facilities—something the UNRWA chief said he has no intention of doing. Donors to UNRWA are pressing for an investigation. The United States, one of the main donors, has suspended funding until a full investigation is completed.
Hamas has governed Gaza since 2007 and has refused to hold elections.
