Just days before the start of the new school year in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, the US-designated terror group is preventing some 4,000 Palestinian children from resuming their studies at schools run by the controversial United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).
And it is doing so in a bid to cover up its war crimes.
In May, two adjacent educational facilities in Gaza’s Zeitoun neighborhood were slightly damaged during the 11-day conflict between Gaza Strip-based terrorist groups and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). The IDF struck underground military targets in the vicinity of the buildings — which were empty at the time — in the first week of hostilities.
The strikes were part of the IDF’s May 13-15 operation that targeted Gaza’s so-called “Metro”: the vast network of subterranean attack tunnels constructed by Hamas. Indeed, UNRWA in June discovered “a cavity and a possible tunnel” at the location in question. A week later, pictures surfaced that clearly showed the shaft of a Hamas tunnel beneath one of the school’s yards.
KAN NEWS EXCLUSIVE: Photos of the tunnel shaft exposed under an UNRWA school yard in Gaza City. A hole in the ground, caused by either a missile or a missile shard, exposed the shaft of a tunnel dug by Hamas 7-8 meters under the school yard. pic.twitter.com/d0xbyZ8fLl
— Gal Berger גל ברגר (@galberger) June 10, 2021
While UNRWA, whose Deputy Commissioner Lenny Steinseth previously thanked Hamas for its “ongoing willingness to cooperate,” did not call out the terror group by name in a statement, the evidence is conclusive. Gaza’s rulers not for the first time endangered Palestinian children by embedding terrorist infrastructure on the property of UN-run schools, which constitutes a war crime.
This was made starker this week when Hamas occupied a UNRWA school in order to prevent inspectors from accessing it; this, in an apparent effort to conceal its tactics. All the while, media outlets such as The New York Times continued to censure Israel for its conduct during the war despite confirmation from UNRWA’s former head in Gaza that the IDF’s strikes during the conflict were “precise” and “sophisticated.”
Notably, Matthias Schmale, along with his deputy David de Bold, was subsequently forced to leave the Palestinian enclave.
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In preparation for the new academic year, which starts on August 16, a team of bomb disposal experts from the United Nations Mine Action Service (UNMAS) was deployed to inspect one of the schools in Zeitoun. According to Palestinian sources interviewed by Israel’s public broadcaster, Kan News, the Hamas-controlled Gaza police quickly arrived and immediately blocked the experts.
Kan reported that Hamas’ intimidation worked not only in this case, but also induced UNMAS to scrap plans to examine another possible Hamas tunnel at a UNRWA school in Rafah.
In response to questions posed by HonestReporting, UNRWA on Wednesday confirmed that the “de facto authorities in Gaza” had taken over one of the facilities.
Hamas prevented a UN team of experts from working in the vicinity of a tunnel shaft that was revealed more than two months ago under an UNRWA school in the Zeitun neighborhood of Gaza, and expelled the team from the place. Palestinian sources reported to Kan News that the team >>
— Gal Berger גל ברגר (@galberger) August 10, 2021
For what it’s worth, UNRWA condemned “the existence and potential use of such underground structures, including tunnels, in the strongest possible terms.” The statement added that “these actions also stand to compromise the safe return of children… and scuttles the Agency efforts to open the schools on time.”
Related Reading: Does UNRWA Violate International Law?
The harassment of UN personnel showcases Hamas’ blatant contempt for basic tenets of international law. Specifically, the Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations states that “premises of the United Nations shall be inviolable.” When the Palestinian Authority was formed following the signing of the Oslo Accords, in a series of letters with UNRWA it pledged to uphold the Convention.
But the terror group is almost certainly trying to hide a far graver violation of international humanitarian law: namely, its use of Gazans as human shields.
Hamas has a long history of embedding assets and fighters in UN schools to shield them from Israeli retaliatory attacks. For example, UNRWA in 2017 discovered a terror tunnel under two schools in the Maghazi camp. During the 2014 war, the agency confirmed that terrorists were using one of its facilities to store rockets, and a UN report subsequently concluded that it is “highly likely” that the structure was used to launch attacks on Israel.
Related Reading: Unreported: IDF Values Life as Hamas Aims to Maximize Casualties
Gaza’s “de facto authorities” are also known to use residential buildings, hotels and even hospitals as launching pads for attacks against the Jewish state. In June, Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’ leader in Gaza, went so far as to admit that the terror group has headquarters “inside towers and residential buildings.”
For instance, Al Jazeera recently aired footage of Gaza’s Metro. “Long and extended passages, ammunition depots, and rocket launch pads, are all part of this underground military and operational complex,” the segment explained. In the video, a member of Hamas’ Al-Qassam Brigades can be seen handling ammunition inside a network of tunnels that, Al Jazeera confirmed, “spans the entire Gaza Strip.”
Additionally, in a rare May 26 Wall Street Journal article, Hamas spokesman Basem Naim was quoted as saying: “How to defend ourselves, with tunnels or without tunnels, where to have the tunnels, this is our choice.”
No other major English-language outlet has mentioned Naim’s quote.
As The New York Times’ ethics guidelines state, news consumers expect journalists to tell the “complete, unvarnished truth” — and that includes inconvenient truths. When reporters time and again ignore Hamas’ war crimes, they are effectively abdicating their collective responsibility to hold to account a terrorist regime that poses a threat to both innocent Israelis and Gazans alike.
