A passport belonging to a U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) teacher was found on the body of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, who was killed by Israeli ground forces in the Gaza city of Rafah on Thursday.
According to Nurit Yohanan, Palestinian affairs correspondent for Israeli public radio’s KAN News, the passport carried by Sinwar belongs to a UNRWA teacher and Rafah native named Hani Zourob who left for Egypt in April.
It was not immediately clear if the passport carried by Sinwar was a copy or a fake document.
Early reports in the chaotic moments after Sinwar’s death suggested the passport was carried by one of his bodyguards, and the bodyguard actually was Hani Zourob.
Yohana said she contacted Zourob and determined he is alive and well in Egypt. Sinwar’s bodyguards are neither alive nor well.
UNRWA is the United Nations relief and development agency for Palestinians. The organization has been criticized for employing Palestinian terrorists, including members of Hamas.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have discovered Hamas operatives using UNRWA facilities to store munitions and plan their attacks. Hamas weapons depots have been found beneath UNRWA hospitals and schools.
A major scandal erupted in January when Israel accused at least a dozen UNRWA employees of actually participating in the October 7 atrocities, which saw 1,200 Israeli civilians murdered as well as hundreds raped, kidnapped, or otherwise brutalized. Israel provided hard evidence for its accusations, including audio recordings of UNRWA employees gloating about kidnapping and raping Israeli women.
The United States, and several other countries, halted funding for UNRWA after these allegations.
The U.N. conducted an investigation and found that nine UNRWA employees “may have” been involved in the October 7 attack. All of those employees were reportedly fired, a remedy that did not come close to satisfying the Israeli government.
“Your ‘relief’ agency has officially stooped to a new level of low, and it is time that the world sees your true face,” Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani said in August.
Most of the countries that suspended payments to UNRWA have resumed funding it because they felt the humanitarian situation in Gaza was so dire. U.S. funding for the organization remains frozen until March 2025 by an act of Congress, despite intense pressure from humanitarian organizations. A group of Democrat lawmakers introduced a bill to restore funding in September.
