Despite the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) coming under fire and being investigated for its staff complicity in the October 7 massacre, the New York Times reported Sunday that the organization was investigating Israel for allegedly abusing hundreds of Palestinian detainees during the war.
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz attacked UNRWA’s report, writing on X: The audacity of @UNRWA, with employees complicit in the October 7th massacre and thousands linked to Hamas, is unacceptable. Their facilities were exploited by terrorist networks. @UNLazzarini, who remained silent, must step down. UNRWA’s presence in Gaza post-Hamas is untenable. This marks the end of Hamas’s influence in the @UN.”

The Times report claimed that the investigation was over the alleged abuse of more than a thousand civilians released without charges, among them women and men aged 6 to 82 who were held in three military bases in Israel, with some of them supposedly dying in custody. The allegations further allege that among the detainees were cancer and Alzheimer’s patients and other injured individuals, and that most of them were arrested while seeking shelter in hospitals and UN buildings.

The Times said the investigation report compiled by UNRWA alleges detainees were held at three Israeli military sites, with some dying in custody, and describes beatings, stripping, robbery, blindfolding, sexual abuse, and denial of access to lawyers and doctors to extract confessions, intimidate, humiliate and punish. Based on interviews with over 100 of the 1,002 released detainees, the report estimates around 3,000 other Gazans remain in Israeli detention without lawyer access. Its findings echo allegations of abuse from Israeli and Palestinian rights groups as well as separate UN investigations into the Israeli detention centers.

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