The lawyer representing a Palestinian engineer that used his position with the United Nations Development Project in Gaza to assist the Islamist Hamas organization claims he was innocent, while denying the accusations by Israel’s security services of his recruitment in 2014 to help the internationally recognized terror group. The lawyer aligned her defense strategy on Hamas’ allegations against Israel, in which her client’s detention was a “premeditated harassment against human rights organizations in Gaza.”
Last week, Israel accused the Islamist Hamas organization of siphoning off aid from international humanitarian organizations meant for Palestinian civilians, its second allegation this month of misuse of international relief funds in the Palestinian enclave. Going public with the arrest in July of the Palestinian engineer working for the UNDP, Israel’s security services, Shin Bet, said the suspect had confessed to being recruited in 2014 to help Hamas. Among “various assignments” he performed on behalf of Gaza’s dominant Islamist group was assistance in building a maritime jetty for its fighters “using UNDP resources,” and managed to persuade his UNDP superiors to priorities Gaza neighborhoods of Hamas operatives, when earmarking money for reconstruction in the Palestinian coastal enclave, which was devastated by a 2014 war with Israel.