Philippe Lazzarini says he already had an uneasy feeling when he traveled to Tel Aviv for the meeting with the Israeli diplomat. It isn't often that the Israelis request a personal appointment with him, the head of the Palestinian relief organization UNRWA, at such short notice. But Amir Weissbrod, the deputy director general at the Israeli Foreign Ministry, says Lazzarini, apparently had something so explosive to discuss that he asked him if he could come over from Jerusalem.

Exchanges with the Israelis usually take place every few weeks and tend to involve deliveries of food, fuel or medicine. Formalities for the organization that supplies a significant portion of the population in Gaza. But that wasn't the case on the evening of January 18. In the lobby of the Kempinski Hotel, the diplomat informed the United Nations manager that Hamas had exploited UNRWA schools in the Gaza Strip as terrorist bases. Lazzarini says he grew impatient: "Amir, I know that's not why you called me here." Weissbrod grabbed a thick folder, opened it and said that Israel has evidence that 12 UNRWA employees had actively participated in the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7, 2023, the massacre in which around 1,140 people were murdered and 250 taken hostage. Weissbrod said that at least six employees had crossed into Israel as part of the attack.

He knew at that moment, Commissioner-General Lazzarini recalls during a conversation in his Jerusalem office at the end of February, that UNRWA's survival was at stake: "That this was going to be about being able to maintain our services and provide vital assistance."

Lazzarini says that Weissbrod had spelled out the names of the accused in English from the dossier, which was written in Hebrew. Then, says Lazzarini, he took his leave, saying he had to check the names against employee lists. He says he had been alarmed for several weeks by rumors about the complicity of individual UNRWA employees. But the allegations that a dozen of them had been involved in the October 7 attacks shocked the UN manager. On the way back to Jerusalem, he began drafting a strategy - to confront the most serious crisis since the organization's inception.

The Palestinian aid organization UNRWA, short for United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, was founded by the General Assembly in 1949 after the first Arab-Israeli war. It is a unique organization, responsible for the education and health care of 5.9 million Palestinian refugees and descendants of refugees in the Palestinian Territories as well as Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. In the absence of a Palestinian state, UNRWA guarantees a minimum level of stability in a region in permanent crisis. And it is by far the most important relief organization in the Gaza war.

But no small number of people in Israel have long seen UNRWA as being part of the problem. They would like to see it abolished, its tasks transferred to other organizations. Critics argue that UNRWA prevents the integration of Palestinians from outside Israel's borders, thus ensuring the continuation of the conflict. Part of the agency's mandate is to also register subsequent generations as refugees. That's why the number of Palestinian refugees has risen from around 750,000 to just under 6 million. The aid organization's mandate is to provide care for these people until the conflict has ended. UNRWA is also committed to neutrality, and finding a political solution is not among its mandates.

The accusations have intensified since October 7. According to more recent findings by the Israelis, at least 30 other employees are believed to have been involved in the massacre, taking hostages or looting. The Israelis claim that 12 percent of the 13,000 employees in the Gaza Strip are active members of Hamas or Islamic Jihad. They also claim the refugee aid organization had known about tunnels beneath its facilities, promoted hatred against Israel and allowed Hamas to steal aid supplies on a grand scale. At the end of January, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: "UNRWA's mission has to end."

In response to the allegations, 18 donor countries have announced the suspension or freezing of their contributions, including Germany, the second most important supporter after the United States. More than half of the annual budget, a total of $450 million, is at stake. According to Lazzarini, UNRWA will have to shut down its operations in April if the money doesn't come in. Schools and health centers in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Israel's neighboring countries would be affected. It's also a question of humanitarian aid for more than 1 million people living in Gaza. Among them are many war-displaced who are already acutely threatened by hunger and disease. More than 30,000 people are reported to have been killed by Israel since October 7. The health care system in the coastal region has largely collapsed. Doctors in the completely devastated north report that babies are dying of malnutrition.

So, what is there to Israel's accusations? And do they justify the potential loss of vitally needed aid?

October 7 as a "Game Changer"

Together with Amir Weissbrod, Nina Ben-Ami is responsible for Israel's relations with the UN and other international organizations. The diplomat receives her guests in a meeting room at the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem. She is wearing a yellow ribbon on the lapel of her blazer, a sign of solidarity with the Israeli hostages in the Gaza Strip. "October 7 was a game changer," she says, adding that the conflict with the organization is old and fundamental, but now UNRWA employees have done things "that cost us lives." Israel even claims to have discovered that one social worker stole the dead body of one of the victims.

Ben-Ami is referring to the case of Faisal Ali Musalam Naami. Video footage from the Be'eri kibbutz allegedly shows the 45-year-old UNRWA employee dragging the body of an Israeli into his SUV with another man on October 7. Journalists with the Washington Post newspaper used facial recognition software to verify that it was indeed Naami. The abducted dead man is said to be 21-year-old Yonatan Samerano. His mother Ayelet Samerano lamented at a press conference in Tel Aviv in mid-February: "How can a social worker for an organization that claims to promote good in this world do something so cruel and inhumane?"

The terrorists were identified "through intelligence information, documents and testimonies found during the fighting," states an Israeli dossier obtained by DER SPIEGEL. The short, six-page document contains profiles of the perpetrators and broad accusations about the alleged links between the UNRWA and terrorist organizations, without providing concrete evidence. One school official is named who is alleged to have abducted an Israeli woman and taken her into Gaza. And a man accused of having been involved in the attack on a kibbutz. More than half of the alleged UNRWA perpetrators on Israeli territory were teachers, according to the document.

"UNRWA is part of the social fabric in Gaza," Philippe Lazzarini says in his office in East Jerusalem. This, he says, is why he can't rule out the possibility that individual employees are active with Hamas or the Palestinian Jihad. "But of course that would be a terrible betrayal – of our organization and of the Palestinians."

Lazzarini says he knew he had to take radical steps after the meeting with Weissbrod. Four days later, he flew to New York to speak with UN Secretary-General António Guterres. He then fired 10 people alleged to have been involved as a precautionary measure. "Reversing the legal process is extremely unusual," says Lazzarini. But he says he is convinced that the survival of his organization is at stake, because October 7 is used "as a justification for everything that is happening in Gaza." Two other suspected perpetrators were killed in bombings, including Faisal Ali Musalam Naami, the man suspected of having stolen the body.

The UN launched two investigations following the conversation between Lazzarini and Guterres in New York. A commission of independent research institutes chaired by former French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna is to take a closer look at risk and error management at UNRWA. Meanwhile, the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services is investigating the specific allegations against the employees. According to UN spokesman Stéphane Dujarric, the cooperation of Israeli authorities is of "critical importance."

By the end of February, however, the Israelis had not yet provided the UN office with any precise information. Lazzarini suspects that the donor countries acted solely on the basis of the six-page dossier: "Out of caution and fear of public opinion."

So far, Israel has done little to substantiate its accusations to the German government. According to Berlin, the Israelis only made written dossiers available late and only for inspection, before then collecting them again. At the beginning of March, a delegation of diplomats, intelligence officers and military personnel traveled through Western capitals. On March 4, they were in Washington, and on March 6, they visited the Chancellery and the Foreign Ministry in Berlin.

The Israeli Embassy in Berlin told DER SPIEGEL that the delegation had presented its German counterparts with "new and clear evidence of the involvement and active participation of UNRWA employees in Hamas terrorist activities." Sources in German government circles, however, say that the Israelis presented "nothing significantly new."

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken initially described the Israeli accusations as being "highly, highly credible," which may have triggered the blocking of funds. Washington's follow-up inquiries in turn caused "consternation" in Israel, the New York Times reported. The Israeli security apparatus, especially, fears incalculable consequences: "If UNRWA ceases operating on the ground, this could cause a humanitarian catastrophe that would force Israel to halt its fighting against Hamas," an Israeli official warned in the Times of Israel.

According to the Wall Street Journal, U.S. intelligence agencies consider the specific Israeli accusations against UNRWA employees to be plausible after closer examination. However, Israeli accusation that 12 percent of all 13,000 UNRWA employees in the Gaza Strip had links to Hamas or Islamic Jihad could not be verified by a U.S. intelligence assessment because American spying agencies haven't traditionally gathered intelligence in Gaza, and Israel hasn't shared its own intelligence with Washington.

Israeli officials state in the same article that they arrived at these figures by comparing UNRWA staff lists found during the military campaign in Gaza that were then crosschecked with other intelligence. The UN agency must submit a register of all employees once a year.

The Wall Street Journal quotes one person familiar with the report as saying, "There is a specific section that mentions how Israeli bias serves to mischaracterize much of their assessments on UNRWA and says this has resulted in distortions."

Israeli intelligence sources initially claimed that around 1,200 UNRWA employees had links to Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Last week, the Israeli army spoke of "450 terrorists" employed by the UN agency, without explaining this discrepancy. The claim that Hamas is "deeply rooted" in UNRWA, as Nina Ben-Ami claims, doesn't appear to be proven.

Who Knew About the "Gaza Metro"?

Israel's dispute with the UN escalated after October 7. Secretary-General Guterres' statement that the terrorist attack "did not happen in a vacuum" contributed significantly to that development. Many Israelis viewed that statement as somehow playing down the massacre. In addition to the secretary-general and UNRWA, Israel is especially critical of the UN Human Rights Council for what it believes are its disproportionately frequent reprimands.

Before the Munich Security Conference in mid-February, the Israeli Foreign Ministry had a brochure printed in which it summarized old and new criticism of the UN aid organization called: "UNRWA: What You Need to Know." It also includes a section on the "use of UNRWA facilities for terrorist activities." It claims that during the Israeli ground operations in the Gaza Strip, the army discovered several weapons caches in UNRWA facilities and was repeatedly fired upon from them.

At the beginning of February, when the scandal surrounding the UNRWA staff members was gaining momentum, the Israeli military also informed the public about a tunnel measuring around 1 kilometer in length in the center of Gaza City. Parts of the tunnel run beneath a UN school and UNRWA headquarters. After a visit, journalists confirmed that they had seen several large computers, a data center, at a depth of around 20 meters. An Israeli military spokesman said: "You have to be very naive to think that UNRWA personnel did not know what was happening under their feet."

It is no secret that Hamas has been building tunnels under the Gaza Strip for years. But even the Israeli security services still seem surprised by the extent of the network. According to Israeli estimates, the "Gaza Metro," as the call it, includes a total of 700 kilometers of tunnels connecting buildings, roads and even towns.

As with many other allegations, says Lazzarini during our interview in Jerusalem, he only learned of the newly discovered tunnel beneath UNRWA headquarters through the press. He says he has neither the military expertise nor the technology – but more importantly, he doesn't have the mandate – to investigate the allegations. The UN Office of Internal Oversight, which has been tasked with investigating the specific allegations, has not yet been granted access to the Gaza Strip.

Matthias Schmale of Germany headed UNRWA there from 2017 to 2021. He had to leave the area one morning because he had described the Israeli army's airstrikes in the 11-day war against Hamas as precise. After that, the Islamists said they could no longer guarantee his safety. He butted heads with Hamas several times during his tenure, making it unlikely that he has close ties to the group.

DER SPIEGEL reached Schmale via WhatsApp in Addis Ababa. Based out of the Ethiopian capital, he currently heads up a UN regional office for development aid in Africa. He considers the accusations that 12 percent of UNRWA employees are members of terrorist organizations to be "grossly exaggerated." He says that working in an area ruled by an Islamist group is, of course, difficult, especially for an aid organization as large as UNRWA. There were certain contacts with Hamas, he says. "Because we wouldn't even have been able to build a school without their consent," he says, "but we managed to draw boundaries and maintain our independence."

Schmale says that during his time in Gaza City, they of course wondered whether tunnels ran beneath them. On two occasions during his tenure, he says, employees actually discovered tunnels under UN schools. "One time, a child fell into a hole that turned out to be the opening to a tunnel," he says. It was only after he personally confronted a Hamas leader that the group admitted the existence of the tunnel. "After speaking to the Israelis, we were able to import concrete and seal the hole," he says.

The Israeli army only discovered the tunnel in Gaza City in early February, several weeks after establishing a presence there. The Israelis have not provided an explanation for how UNRWA was supposed to know about it. "I, for one, can't imagine that the employees didn't notice, because they were constantly on site," says diplomat Nina Ben-Ami.

High Marks for UNRWA Schools

Israel's criticism isn't just about what is allegedly happening beneath the schools. One of the recurring accusations made by the government and pro-Israeli non-governmental organizations such as UN Watch is that UNRWA is educating children to hate Israel. The focus has repeatedly been on teaching materials. The UN agency doesn't publish its own textbooks and instead uses those of the respective country. In the case of the occupied territories – the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip – that means the schools used the textbooks provided by the Palestinian Authority.

Critics maintain that they contain maps of historical Palestine that do not show the Israeli borders. "The criticism of the maps is understandable," says the Hamburg-based Islamic scholar Achim Rohde. "But show me a map in Israeli school textbooks that shows a possible state of Palestine within the 1967 borders."

"It should be noted that both curricula convey competing national narratives in a conflict that has been going on for a century." The drastic nature of the criticism from Israel or pro-Israeli think tanks has "not been confirmed by solid research over and over again," says Rohde.

Einat Wilf, a former Member of the Knesset and author of the book "The War of Return," which is critical of UNRWA, expresses fundamental concerns about the UNRWA school system. "That is where modern Palestinian nationalism was born," she says. And it's not just October 7 that shows where this can lead, she says. "Even the perpetrators of the (1972) Munich Olympics attack were products of UNRWA schools."

But some, including the World Bank, give the UNRWA education system high marks. According to a 2021 study, UNRWA pupils in the Palestinian territories have a learning advantage of almost an entire year over pupils in public institutions in the same area.

Tasnim Abedelhadi, 34, attended two UNRWA schools in Khan Younis and says that her schooling never focused on politics. She learned, she says, how to succeed in a male-dominated society. DER SPIEGEL reached Abedelhadi, a translator, via WhatsApp in Rafah, the city in the far south of the Gaza Strip to which a large part of Gaza's population has fled since the start of the Israeli ground offensive. Abedelhadi, her husband and their three young daughters have been there since December, when the Israeli army began to advance against Hamas fighters in Khan Younis. It is not only the education in UNRWA schools that is good, Abedelhadi says. She also received psychological support and vaccinations.

Thanks to an UNRWA scholarship, she was able to train as an English teacher and complete a university degree. Until October 7, she had worked successfully for various clients abroad as a marketing expert. When her six-year-old daughter received a spot in a UNRWA school in September, she was proud. "Now, she asks me every morning when she can go back. And why Hamas started this war."

If UNRWA didn't exist, all children in the Gaza Strip would have to go to public schools. Those institutions, though, were controlled by Hamas before the war. Israel is unlikely to have much interest in that scenario either.

No Proof of Theft

Even more relevant in the war than education seems to be Israel's accusation that the UNRWA is allowing itself to be robbed systematically. Hamas, claimed Israeli premier Netanyahu on television, pilfers 60 percent of the aid deliveries that the organization brings to the Gaza Strip. In November, the Israeli Civil Administration of the Palestinian Territories posted a video on X of UNRWA boxes and bags in an alleged Hamas tunnel. UNRWA goods were also seen in numerous Israeli army videos of Hamas hideouts. Philippe Lazzarini said during the interview in his office that he can't rule out such an eventuality. "In principle, however, we distribute everything that we bring in ourselves, there are no intermediaries."

In an interview with the think tank Carnegie, David Satterfield, the U.S. special representative for humanitarian affairs in the Middle East, emphasized that the Israelis have not provided the U.S. government with any concrete evidence that UN aid is being stolen in the Gaza Strip. In recent weeks, the biggest problem has been that the Israeli army has killed Palestinian police officers, whom the military classifies as members of Hamas. But without a police presence, the convoys are usually held up by criminal gangs or stormed by the desperate. UNRWA also had to suspend its deliveries to northern Gaza after convoys were allegedly fired on by the Israeli army. A total of 162 UNRWA employees have been killed since October 7.

Tasnim Abedelhadi, the translator from Khan Younis, now lives with her husband and daughters in a tent in Rafah. Their home was completely destroyed. UNRWA did provide the family with blankets, cleaning materials, water and food. The flour rations that UNRWA has been providing since December saved their lives.

David Satterfield knows thaUNRWA's capabilities in the Gaza Strip are unique: There are 3,000 staff members responsible for emergency relief alone. Currently, more than 1 million people are housed in UNRWA emergency shelters. Other aid organizations lack local networks, personnel and infrastructure.

The World Food Program (WFP), for example, has only 70 employees in Gaza, says Satterfield. When Israel organized a convoy of food trucks to Gaza City on its own initiative the week before last, it ended in disaster: More than 100 people died, many of them shot by Israeli soldiers, according to numerous reports.

Despite all this, the Israeli Foreign Ministry now wants to transfer UNRWA's tasks to the WFP, the children's aid organization UNICEF or the World Health Organization (WHO). There is no exact plan. Expanding the mandates of the individual organizations is a complex undertaking, says international law expert Christoph Safferling of the International Nuremberg Principles Academy. "The principle of voluntariness applies here," he says. "Israel cannot force them."

Israel Is Actually Obliged To Provide More Aid

However, it's not only politicians in Israel who want to make changes on the ground. In the U.S. Congress, Republicans and Democrats are in agreement that UNRWA should no longer be funded, says Satterfield. Israeli UNRWA critic Einat Wilf considers this to be the only way forward. "It's not about who replaces UNRWA, it's about making sure that it happens." Otherwise, the Palestinians would continue to cling to the idea of returning to Israeli territory.

Wilf's position seems questionable given that a return is part of the Palestinian identity and is not dependent on the existence of UNRWA. But U.S. politicians are apparently going along with that view and the organization is losing its most important donor. Germany, for its part, wants to "decide on future contributions on the basis of the progress of the investigations and in coordination with other donor countries," said a spokeswoman for the Foreign Ministry in Berlin. In contrast, the European Commission recently decided to pay out 50 million euros and to make the transfer of a further 32 million euros dependent on the results of the investigation. It's a decision that guarantees the survival of UNRWA for at least a few more weeks. The German government had previously warned the Commission against releasing the funds without stipulating conditions. Qatar recently announced a special payment, and the Canadian government is reported to be on the verge of resuming its payments.