To his students, Ahmad al-Khatib was a deputy principal at an elementary school in Gaza run by the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees. To Hamas’s military wing, documents say, he was something else entirely: an infantryman operating out of the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis.
The military wing, known as the Qassam Brigades, kept meticulous records of its fighters, tracking the weapons they were issued and regularly evaluating everything from their fitness to their loyalty.
Mr. al-Khatib, an employee of the U.N. agency since 2013, was among them: Secret internal Hamas documents shared with The New York Times by the Israeli government say that he held the rank of squad commander, was an expert in ground combat and had been given at least a dozen weapons, including a Kalashnikov and hand grenades.
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The agency’s schools in Gaza have become a flashpoint in the current conflict. Close to 200 UNRWA facilities have been struck since the war began, many of them schools.
Israel claims that Hamas has used the buildings for military purposes and to hide its fighters, making them legitimate targets under international law. But the United Nations says that Israeli strikes on schools have likely violated the law by causing disproportionate harm to noncombatants.
Among the seized records are secret Hamas military plans that show that the Qassam Brigades regarded schools and other civilian facilities as “the best obstacles to protect the resistance” in the group’s asymmetric war with Israel. The documents also list two schools in particular that were to be used as redoubts where fighters could hide and stash weapons in a conflict.
The Israeli government shared the documents at The Times’s request, after Israeli officials had circulated a list of 100 UNRWA workers it alleged were militants. The Times asked for documents specifically related to school employees, who, as a sizable subset of the agency’s employees, offer a window into the evidence behind Israel’s claims.
The seized records — coupled with interviews of current and former UNRWA employees, residents and former students in Gaza — offer the most detailed evidence yet of the extent of Hamas’s presence inside UNRWA schools. In several cases, educators remained employed by UNRWA even after Israel provided written warnings that they were militants.
The group’s presence in education appears to have extended beyond Gaza’s borders: In September, Hamas announced the death of its leader in Lebanon — a school principal and a former head of UNRWA’s teachers’ union in that country.
Israel has long accused UNRWA of doing too little to prevent infiltration by Hamas. Earlier this year, Israel alleged that 18 of the agency’s workers participated in the Oct. 7 attack, and several countries that fund UNRWA suspended donations.
In October, the Israeli Parliament passed legislation aimed at shutting down UNRWA’s Gaza and West Bank operations, and it has recently briefed diplomats from countries that fund UNRWA on the documents shared with The Times.
While Israel asserts that other aid agencies could perform UNRWA’s functions, humanitarian officials worry that the abrupt transition Israel seeks could be catastrophic.
UNRWA has said it takes allegations that staff members were militants seriously. In response to the Times inquiry into the documents, UNRWA officials said that the agency had put one employee on administrative leave and that the United Nations had requested more information from Israel on about 10 others.
Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA’s commissioner general, said the agency had struggled to get information from Israel that would allow it to act on the allegations. He added pointedly that it was “extraordinarily interesting” that the Israeli government had not chosen to share the materials with the agency itself.
But he also acknowledged that UNRWA lacked the resources to independently investigate such allegations.
“We have always been clear that we are not an intelligence or security type of organization,” Mr. Lazzarini said in an interview.
Israeli officials, for their part, said that the United Nations had tried to minimize the problem. They have expressed frustration about how the United Nations responded when Israel shared detailed intelligence earlier this year about the 18 UNRWA workers it accused of participating in Oct. 7.
“The U.N. seems intent on portraying this problem as a few bad apples, rather than acknowledging that the tree is rotten,” said Amir Weissbrod, the foreign ministry’s deputy director for international organizations.
Basem Naim, a spokesman for Hamas, declined to comment.
The Times could not reach most of the educators named in the documents because their phone numbers were not working, they did not respond to messages on social media, and it is difficult to track down people in a war zone where Israel largely bars reporters from entering.
Residents of Gaza said in interviews that the idea that Hamas had operatives in UNRWA schools was an open secret. One educator on Israel’s list of 100 was regularly seen after hours in Hamas fatigues carrying a Kalashnikov.
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In 2017, UNRWA discovered a tunnel that passed under the Maghazi Prep B Boys School in central Gaza. The agency said at the time that it had lodged a protest with Hamas over the tunnel and had moved to seal entrances.
Seized records say that the principal of the school, Khaled al-Masri, is a Hamas member who was issued an assault rifle and a handgun, and he is pictured standing in front of a Hamas banner on Facebook.
He remains on UNRWA’s staff, the agency says, but is under investigation for a social media violation.
This February, Israeli officials said, their forces conducted a raid on a tunnel shaft next to another UNRWA school, which led underneath the school to a nearly half-mile-long tunnel equipped with weapons. Seized Hamas records list that principal, Mohammed Shuwaideh, as a deputy squad commander with engineering expertise.
Mr. Lazzarini, the UNRWA official, said that the mere existence of an adjacent shaft did not necessarily implicate the principal. Nevertheless, on Nov. 13, the same day that The Times questioned UNRWA about Mr. Shuwaideh, he was put on administrative leave.
The United Nations has no way to verify that its employees are not members of Hamas or other militant groups, said James Lindsay, who served as UNRWA’s general counsel until 2007.
“The U.N. has been unable and or unwilling to eliminate Hamas militants and their supporters, as well as those from other terrorist groups, from their ranks,” Mr. Lindsay said. “UNRWA hiring practices and the makeup of the labor pool from which UNRWA draws its employees suggests to me that the numbers the Israelis are talking about are probably pretty close to the truth.”
Even for criminal background checks, UNRWA relies on employees to self-report and provide confirmation of a clean record by way of a letter from the “de facto authorities.” In Gaza, that means Hamas, and before Hamas took over in 2007, it meant the Palestinian Authority.
The most serious effort to investigate potential Hamas members within the agency’s employees came after Israel accused the 18 UNRWA workers of involvement in the Oct. 7 attack. In those cases, Israeli officials said they provided video and sensitive intelligence that they say backed up their claims. (A 19th name was dropped after officials said he was misidentified.)
For nine of the workers, the U.N. Office of Internal Oversight Services said there was insufficient evidence to take action. But a copy of its report, which was never made public, says it did not consider evidence that Israel provided about their “alleged membership of the armed wing of Hamas or other militant groups.”
U.N. investigators ultimately only found that the other nine “may have” been involved. (In one case, investigators were shown video of the worker throwing a dead Israeli into an S.U.V.)
Still, an UNRWA spokesman said that almost all of the employees were terminated or put on leave.
Khalil al-Halabi, a former UNRWA official in Gaza, argued that punishing the entire agency and everyone it serves over the misdeeds of some employees was unfair. But he said that the actions of militant-linked workers were causing enormous damage to the agency.
“It’s a disaster,” said Mr. al-Halabi, who has been critical of the Oct. 7 attack. “They’re essentially giving Israel a pretext to shut UNRWA down.”
View this New York times report from December 8th