Former French FM Colonna, heading UNRWA probe, meets officials during Israel visit
Lazar Berman is The Times of Israel's diplomatic reporter
France’s former foreign minister Catherine Colonna, who is heading the independent review of UNRWA, begins her visit to Israel.
She meets with Foreign Ministry Director General Kobi Blitstein, and will be presented with intelligence on Hamas tunnels in and around UNRWA facilities, terrorist attacks by UNRWA employees, and the use of UNRWA sites to launch rockets at Israel, according to the Foreign Ministry.
Foreign Minister Israel Katz says that Israel is cooperating fully with the investigation.
Israel will also present evidence that the UN body responsible for Palestinian refugees incites against the Jewish state in its schools.
In January, UNRWA announced that it had commissioned an independent review “to assess whether the Agency is doing everything within its power to ensure neutrality and to respond to allegations of serious breaches when they are made.”
Colonna is working with three organizations on the review – the Raoul Wallenberg Institute in Sweden, the Chr. Michelsen Institute in Norway, and the Danish Institute for Human Rights.
She is expected to submit an interim report in late March, and a final report a month later.
In February, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres ordered the UN’s Office of Internal Oversight Services to investigate allegations that 12 UNRWA staffers took part in Hamas’s October 7 terror onslaught in southern Israel.
