For the first time, gruesome images have emerged supporting Israel’s claim that UN personnel participated in the Hamas attacks on October 7 that left 1,200 dead.
More than a dozen countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom, suspended payments to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency in late January after Israel accused 12 agency employees of being directly involved in the attack led by Hamas.
Security footage has reportedly been released showing one, Faisal Ali Musalam Al-Naami, 45, loading a shot Israeli into his SUV and driving away.
The graphic images were taken near the entrance to Kibbutz Beeri, where more than 100 people died, just two miles from the Gaza border.
“UNRWA has lost legitimacy and can no longer function as a UN agency,” said Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
Three Israelis had already been pulled from their car and shot when the white Toyota Terrano arrived at the entrance to Kibbutz Beeri, near Gaza, early on October 7.
The man is seen getting out of the van with a friend two miles into Israel before the pair open the trunk door.
Israel claims to have identified the man as UNRWA social worker Faisal Ali Musalam Al-Naami, 45.
In the film, a suspected Al-Naami man is seen stopping his white Nissan Terrano next to the motionless bodies of three Israeli men who had earlier been dragged out of a car and shot.
A man emerges from the Terrano’s passenger side with a semi-automatic machine gun before Al-Naami gets out and helps him clear a space in the back of the car.
The pair then grab one of the injured men between them and drag him to the van before covering his face with a blanket.
They then return to their belongings scattered across the blood-stained road and search through them before Al-Naami pockets a mobile phone.
They completely ignore the other two men and are seen walking away from the scene less than 90 seconds after arriving.
Al-Naami was among 12 men named by Gallant for the first time on Friday, but said Israeli intelligence suggests up to 30 more could have participated.
“Of UNRWA’s 13,000 workers, 12 percent are affiliated with Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ),” he said.
Israel claims that Al-Naami was a member of the Hamas brigade in his hometown of Nuseirat and had also transported weapons and trucks used in the October 7 attack.
The footage shows the two men approaching an off-duty IDF soldier who was lying motionless on the road.
The pair then grab both ends of the injured man and carry him to the truck, where one covers his face with a blanket.
Less than 90 seconds after arriving, the pair reverse and disappear to an unknown destination with the wounded Israeli.
Israel has also revealed details of a second UNRWA employee who it claims participated in the October 7 Hamas attack.
«One thousand four hundred and sixty-eight workers are known to be active in Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
“One hundred and eighty-five UNRWA workers are active in the military branches of Hamas and 51 are active in the military branch of Islamic Jihad in Palestine,” he added.
The agency was formed in 1948 to care for Palestinian refugees displaced during the war that established Israel as a state.
It is now the largest UN agency and recruits its staff overwhelmingly from the Palestinian population in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
Naami worked as a social worker, according to a colleague who spoke to the Washington Post, while nine of the 12 worked in schools as teachers or counselors, according to Israel.
The agency is also the primary means of delivering aid to Gaza’s 2.3 million residents, more than a quarter of whom are at imminent risk of starvation, the group claims.
All of its schools and health centers have become shelters for some of the 1.8 million people displaced by Israel’s invasion.
The 12 named suspects were immediately fired by the agency and UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said he could not afford to give them the benefit of the doubt.
“My judgment, based on this post, true or false, was that I need to make the quickest and boldest decision to demonstrate that, as an agency, we take this allegation seriously.”
Israel said Al-Naami was a member of the Hamas brigade in his hometown of Nuseirat and had also transported weapons and trucks used in the October 7 attack.
His UNRWA colleague said he was killed along with his wife and five of his children in an Israeli airstrike on their home just nine days later.
“His personality was calm, very happy, friendly, he was loved by everyone, colleagues, clients and beneficiaries,” his colleague told The Post.
Israel said the wounded man was an IDF soldier and it is not known what happened to him after he was loaded into the van.
According to the Gaza Health Ministry, at least 28,775 people have been killed, mostly women and children, and 68,552 have been injured in Gaza since the war began.
Nearly three-quarters of the population drinks from contaminated water sources and half are now overcrowded in the southern border town of Rafah as Israel prepares to attack the city.
Yoav Gallant, a former IDF general (pictured), told a group of journalists at a briefing on Friday that about 12 percent of UNRWA personnel were members of Hamas or Islamic Jihad.
People in Gaza inspect damage to their homes following an Israeli airstrike on Sunday.
A Palestinian man is seen with his baby in front of makeshift tents on Saturday as Palestinian families who abandoned their homes and took refuge in the city of Rafah take shelter from Israeli attacks.
President Joe Biden last week warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that an attack on the city “should not be carried out without a credible and enforceable plan to ensure safety and support for the more than one million people sheltering there.” “.
But Washington said it would again veto this week’s long-awaited UN Security Council resolution on a ceasefire.
Last night, Netanyahu said that those concerned about an offensive in Rafah were telling the country to “lose the war” against Hamas.
“It is true that there is a lot of opposition abroad, but this is exactly the moment when we must say that we will not do half or a third of the work,” he insisted.