 By YAAKOV KATZ AND HERB KEINON Increasingly concerned that Hamas will steal money donated for Gaza's rehabilitation, the Defense Ministry distributed a document this week revealing that unions affiliated with the terrorist group have set up joint committees with UN agencies that dispense humanitarian aid.  The aftermath of an IAF strike in Gaza.
The document was distributed to the Foreign Ministry, Finance Ministry and the Israeli intelligence community, and was also sent to the United States to warn it that the $900 million it has pledged to help rebuild the Gaza Strip could fall into Hamas hands.
"All humanitarian aid sent into the Gaza Strip today needs to receive Hamas clearance," a senior defense official told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday. "Hamas uses violence against international organizations, including UNRWA, if they do not cooperate." Hamas recently published an ad in a Palestinian newspaper warning that "whoever does not follow its orders will be forced to leave Gaza." The internal Defense Ministry document revealed that on July 12, a meeting was held between UNRWA, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and Hamas officials who are in charge of the contractors and engineer unions in the Gaza Strip. The objective was to establish a mechanism which will be responsible for distributing the billions of dollars pledged for the rehabilitation of the Strip by the US and European and Arab countries. So far, Hamas has taken control of millions of dollars transferred monthly by Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salaam Fayad to the UNDP and designated for Gazans whose homes were destroyed during Operation Cast Lead last winter. At the meeting, Hamas officials told the UN representatives they wanted to be able to draw up the list of people who would receive the money, according to the Defense Ministry document. The sides decided to set up joint committees and to continue to meet in the future. "This is an indication to us that there is no effective mechanism that can be established that will bypass Hamas and ensure the money goes straight to the Palestinian people," the senior defense official said. Israeli government sources said it was "no secret" that UN officials in Gaza were having talks on a technical level with Hamas regarding the distribution of humanitarian aid there. According to the officials, UNRWA and UNDP had "no choice" but to have some contact with Hamas officials in order for the assistance to be transferred. They added that Israel could live with that situation as long as the talks remained only at the technical level and did not become political in nature. One official said efforts to develop a mechanism through which money for the rehabilitation of Gaza could be channeled into the region, without in any way strengthening or helping Hamas, is continuing. This effort has been going on since the end of Operation Cast Lead in January, and hundreds of millions of dollars of international aid that has been contributed for rebuilding the Gaza Strip is not being allowed in until such a mechanism is created. In response to the report, UNRWA Spokesman Chris Gunness released a statement saying: "UNRWA distributes its aid on basis of need. Humanitarian need dictates the way we distribute aid and nothing else." JP
TWO Iraqi soldiers who helped rescue Melbourne man Douglas Wood from kidnappers in the war-torn country in 2005 have been given asylum in Australia.
Mr Wood, who spent six weeks under threat in Iraq until being rescued in April 2005, asked Kevin Rudd act swiftly in assisting the servicemen to obtain sanctuary in Australia.
Immigration Minister Senator Chris Evans said the two men, who had been hiding in the Middle East after fleeing Iraq, had arrived safely in Australia this week.
"The Australian Government recognises the contribution that the Iraqi service personnel made in securing the release of Douglas Wood," Senator Evans said.
"The lives of these men were assessed as being in imminent danger so it was critical their claims were processed as quickly as possible," he said.
The Iraqi men will receive the assistance provided to all refugees through the government's humanitarian settlement services to help them establish their new lives in Australia. Source: The Australian
 By Asaf Romirowsky and Nicole Brackman There was a bit of head-scratching going on recently in the hallowed halls of the UN. After weeks of rebuking Israel for preventing humanitarian aid to flow into Gaza, UN officials were forced to cancel deliveries of aid into the Hamas-controlled territory after terrorists broke into a UN Relief and Works Agency warehouse and made off with 800 tons of blankets, food and other basic commodities to sell them to the highest bidders. Israeli officials have been saying all along that Hamas routinely diverts humanitarian aid. In April, fuel trucks destined for UNRWA warehouses were overtaken. It was reported in August that Hamas gunmen had hijacked more than 10 trucks destined for the Palestinian Red Crescent Society full of food and medical supplies. All that is only more ironic given the worldwide castigation of Israel for allegedly preventing humanitarian aid to flow into Gaza during the military operation. And the criticism wasn't limited to the issue of aid. The UN (and the international community) was quick to condemn Israel for allegedly targeting an UNRWA-run school, despite widespread acknowledgement that Hamas routinely employs such facilities as "civilian shields" in an attempt to draw Israeli fire. The incident where IDF fire hit an UNRWA school in the Jabalya refugee camp in Gaza is indeed tragic. At the time, UNRWA insisted there were no terrorists in the school compound and the Israelis were "careless," with UNRWA Operations Director John Ging claiming that mortars had hit the school, killing dozens and wounding more. Just days ago, though, UN officials admitted that Israel had not hit the school at all, but an area outside it. Ging admitted that his original claims were wrong. Read more ...Source: Philadelphia Daily News
Lech Mintowt-Czyz | February 07
THE UN has halted humanitarian supplies into Gaza after Hamas forces seized an aid convoy.
Members of the Islamist group which controls the territory took control of 10 trucks in the second such confiscation within two days.
The aid had been intended for the victims of the Israeli offensive which killed 1300 Palestinians, left 5000 wounded and thousands homeless.
Christopher Gunness, spokesman for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) which supports much of Gaza’s 1.5 million population, said: “The Hamas government must return all of the aid that’s been confiscated... and we have to be given by the Hamas government credible assurances that this will not happen again.
“If it doesn’t happen, then we will continue with the suspension of our imports.”
The UN decision comes after an similar incident on Wednesday when Hamas took 3,500 blankets and 4,000 food parcels, which had been earmarked for 500 families in need, from an UNRWA storeroom in Gaza.
Hamas denied its officials had been involved in the storeroom theft.
The United Nations has refused to hand aid over directly to the welfare ministry run by Hamas, labelled by the West as a terrorist organisation but which won Palestinian elections three years ago.
Ahmed al-Kurd, welfare minister in Gaza’s Hamas government, said the supplies were taken by mistake.
“It was a misunderstanding between drivers,” Mr al-Kurd said. “We have told UNRWA they can come and take the goods. For some reason, they did not come.”
The aid row came as Hamas said it will reject a long-term truce with Israel being mediated by Egypt unless the deal includes lifting the blockade on the Gaza Strip.
The group's leader Khaled Meshaal, addressing a rally in Damascus, said Hamas has only received “vague” proposals from Egypt without an Israeli commitment to lift the siege.
He said: "We will not accept a truce unless it was in return for lifting the siege, opening the border crossings and acceleration of the reconstruction of Gaza." Source: The Australian
Hamas police in Gaza have seized thousands of blankets and food parcels meant for needy residents, UN spokesman Chris Gunness said Wednesday.
Gunness said Hamas police raided a UN warehouse in Gaza City, snatching 3,500 blankets and over 400 food parcels - supplied meant for 500 Palestinian families. He said the incident took place on Tuesday evening, and that it marked the first time Hamas had seized UN aid.
In a statement released Wednesday, UNRWA condemned the theft "in the strongest terms," and demanded that it be "returned immediately." The statement added that the organization "has a strict system of monitoring aid delivery and ensuring that its assistance reaches only the intended beneficiaries," and that officials were present "taking all possible steps to avoid its diversion."
The aid is especially vital now because Gazans are facing hardship after Israel's three-week military offensive against Hamas.
Israeli officials have charged that the group routinely confiscates supplies meant for needy Gazans.
A Hamas government spokesman was not immediately available for comment.
Earlier in the week, meanwhile, former UN and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees chief attorney James Lindsay alleged that the organization does little to check whether its staff or clients are terrorists.
Allegations linking terrorists to UNRWA are not new. Israel has said many times its troops were fired on by gunmen using UNRWA facilities, that UNRWA vehicles transported weapons and that some of its staff members were terrorists.
UNRWA has denied those charges and Israel has often retracted them or found them hard to prove.
The issue, Lindsay wrote in a 67-page critique of the organization, is not intention but oversight.
"UNRWA has taken very few steps to detect and eliminate terrorists from the ranks of its staff or its beneficiaries, and no steps at all to prevent members of terrorist organizations such as Hamas from joining its staff," he wrote.
UNRWA said in response that its staff were prohibited from any political involvement.
UNRWA was created in 1949 by General Assembly Resolution 302 and began operation in May 1950 to service what at the time was 957,000 refugees in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, many of whom been rendered homeless or jobless by the 1948-49 war with Israel, according to Lindsay. Source: Jerusalem Post
 Abraham Rabinovich, Jerusalem January 21, 2009
ISRAEL hastened its pullout of troops from the Gaza Strip yesterday, aiming to have the last units out before Barack Obama was sworn in as US President this morning.
Jerusalem was hoping to keep its neighbourhood disputes from cluttering Mr Obama's desk on his first day in office.
Although Israelis share the excitement of Mr Obama's ascension to power and the widespread sense of a new beginning, there is concern about where his promised involvement in the Middle East will take him.
There is some fear that any attempt at "even-handedness" will inevitably move him closer to the Arab point of view compared with George W. Bush, who was one of the most pro-Israeli presidents Washington has seen.
But there were also hopes Mr Obama may be able to promote a peace process precisely because he is perceived in the Arab world as being less committed to Israel, despite his pro-Israel statements.
The Jewish state yesterday began releasing reservists mobilised three weeks ago for the Gaza operation as troops from the standing army emerging from Gaza deployed on the strip's periphery. Israel permitted more than 200 trucks carrying humanitarian aid to cross into Gaza.
The Egyptian newspaper Al Ahram reported yesterday that Hamas political leader Khaled Meshaal said on Friday that Hamas had not expected the Israeli attack to last more than three days. It lasted 22 days. He told Arab leaders at a conference in Qatar that he had expected masses of demonstrators to turn out in Arab countries demanding that Egypt open its crossing point into Gaza. There were some demonstrations but the crossing remains closed.
Hamas officials emerged from their hideouts in the Gaza Strip yesterday to find entire streets and neighbourhoods laid waste by Israeli air and ground attacks.
"The Israelis did this deliberately to tell the people 'This is because you elected Hamas'," an official said as he surveyed some of the massive destruction. "And they were saying 'This is what will happen if you elect them again'."
Officials in Gaza remained defiant. "We are in a powerful, victorious position," said Mushir al-Masri, a Hamas spokesman. "Israel will soon learn that the balance of power has shifted in Hamas' favour."
A major question is whether the Israeli attack will make Gaza's population identify more closely with Hamas or whether a majority will come to blame Hamas for the destruction.
Both points of view could be heard in media interviews.
Israel and Egypt have portrayed Hamas as a proxy of Iran and said Tehran was using Hamas to further its own interests.
An Israeli official said the "real battle for Gaza" was only beginning, as the relevant parties attempt to shape the political fallout of the war.
At an Arab economic summit in Kuwait, $US2 billion ($3 billion) was pledged in aid for Gaza. Egypt and other moderate Arab states said the money would be channelled through the Palestinian Authority to give its moderate leader, President Mahmoud Abbas, a foothold in Gaza. Source: The Australian
 Palestinians crowd to receive food aid at a
United Nations food distribution center in
Shati refugee camp in Gaza City, Saturday.Hamas on Monday raided some 100 aid trucks that Israel had allowed into Gaza, stole their contents and sold them to the highest bidders. The IDF said that since terminal activity is coordinated with UNRWA and the Red Cross, Israel could do nothing to prevent such raids, Israel Radio reported. Between 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., the army had ceased all military activity in Gaza and once again established a "humanitarian corridor" to help facilitate the transfer of the supplies. The Kerem Shalom and Karni crossings had been opened to allow in the aid trucks. Security officials at Kerem Shalom thwarted an attempt to smuggle electrical goods, disguised as humanitarian supplies, into Gaza. The electrical goods included computers, infra-red cameras, ovens, microwaves and other electronic equipment. Read more ...Source: Jerusalem PostH/T: SM
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