Israel arrests UN Gaza employee for aiding Hamas

Palestinian staff of the United Nations Development Programme drive an official auto in front of its headquarters in Gaza City on Tuesday.

Israeli security agency Shin Bet said Waheed Borsh, 38, was indicted on Tuesday. Israel has claimed repeatedly that the United Nations was being taken advantage of by Hamas in Gaza in an effort to tarnish the worldwide body’s critical work in the beleaguered territory.

The announcement follows the charging on Thursday of the Gaza head of US-based NGO World Vision with diverting millions of dollars of global aid money to Hamas.

World Vision said in a statement that its budgets are audited by professional and worldwide auditors. And a spokesman for Hamas in Gaza, Hazem Qasem, called Israel’s allegations “lies”.

The ministry’s spokesman, Emmanuel Nahshon, said the head of the UNDP was informed, alongside officials from the office of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. “Hamas does not want to be in a position where we feel we need to keep defending ourselves”.

The UNDP, an agency of the UN, is one of the world’s largest multilateral development agencies. It said he was arrested in July and confessed to using his position to help Hamas.

In a statement, Shin Bet claimed Borsh had redirected UNDP aid allocations to Hamas’ military activities, including the construction of a jetty on the Gaza coast for use by Hamas naval units.

On August 4, Shin Bet said that Hamas infiltrated in the Christian relief organization World Vision providing aid to the strip and has funneled some 60 percent of aid group’s budget to Hamas’s military wing.

Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said this case, as well as that of Halabi a few days earlier, shows how “Hamas exploits the resources of global organisations at the expense of the civilian population in the Gaza Strip”. Palestinians who benefitted from World Vision aid in the Strip gathered outside the World Vision headquarters in Gaza City, demanding that Halabi, whom they dubbed “humanity’s savior”, be released from Israeli custody immediately.

World Vision has stopped its Gaza operations while investigations are underway. A lawyer acting on behalf of Halabi told Al Jazeera that his client was tortured during his interrogation by Israel.

World Vision suspended operations in Gaza and was conducting a review, including an external forensic audit, the charity said in a statement Monday.

He also allegedly helped Hamas hide weapons and materials that were kept in United Nations houses and did not report them, in a violation of United Nations procedures.

“World Vision’s cumulative operating budget in Gaza for the past 10 years was approximately $22.5 million (£17.3m), which makes the alleged amount of up to $50m being diverted hard to reconcile”. Money was paid as salaries to Hamas militants who were falsely registered as World Vision employees.