Israel arrests Palestinian UN employee accused of using position to support Hamas

Mohammad El Halabi, World Vision’s manager of operations in Gaza, was arrested by Israel on June 15 while crossing the border into the enclave, which is under the de facto rule of Hamas, a group on Israeli and USA terrorism blacklists. A senior staffer in Gaza was arrested in June and indicted on Thursday.

World Vision International is also taking steps in response to the charges, including suspending its Gaza operations, conducting an internal review and cooperating with the investigation.

World Vision said in an August 4 statement it was “shocked” at the allegations against Mohammed El Halabi, who was arrested mid-June and held for 50 days (reportedly without access to a lawyer), IRIN, the news agency that covers emergencies, reports. That suspect, Mohammed El Halabi, denied the charges, as did Hamas, while World Vision said it had yet to see evidence to back up Israel’s allegations.

A humanitarian aid worker in the Gaza Strip has been arrested and charged with using his position to provide material assistance to Hamas’ terrorist/military efforts. Halabi’s father also denied that he is a member of Hamas.

On Monday the United Nations expressed “serious concerns” over the World Vision allegations.

Replying to TODAY’s queries, World Vision Singapore spokeswoman Fiona Soh, said: “World Vision Singapore donors support Middle East programmes in West Bank – not Gaza – and in Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and the Kurdistan Region of Iraq for the Syrian refugees”.

Israel accused him of stealing around $7.2 million a year, or around 60 per cent of all of World Vision’s funds for Gaza.

He is the second humanitarian worker to be charged by Israel in the past week with aiding Hamas.

The group will be provided full refunds on “in-country” costs.

Nearly immediately after the indictment against the UNDP employee was announced, pro-Israel pressure group “UN Watch” urged action at what it called “the apparently pervasive subversion in Gaza of UN and other global humanitarian aid funds by Hamas”.

Muslim charity groups anticipate having to step up their fundraising for Gaza, which suffers from a 43 percent unemployment rate – the highest in the world.

Beneficiaries of World Vision’s projects in Gaza worry that the case against Mr. El Halabi will hurt their ability to recover from damages caused by three major wars against the 140-square-mile enclave in less than a decade. In recent years, its Gaza branch has focused on rebuilding the homes and businesses destroyed in the conflicts between Israel and Hamas.

The office of the World Vision, in east Jerusalem.

A spokesman for Israel’s Foreign Ministry disputed that, telling the AP, “They are trying to belittle their role and to show they are much smaller than they really are”.