A representative for the United Nations Development Program in Jerusalem said that their contractor, accused of assisting the Islamist Hamas organization, deserves a fair and speedy justice process. “The contractor has been provided legal presentation by the state of Israel. We as UNDP consider that the contractor has the right and deserves to have fair and just and speedy justice process,” said Roberto Valent, UNDP Special representative of the administrator. Israel accused Hamas of siphoning off aid by international humanitarian organizations meant for Palestinian civilians, the second Israeli allegation this month of misuse of international relief funds in the Gaza Strip. Going public with the arrest in July of a Palestinian engineer working for the UNDP, Israel’s security agency Shin Bet said he confessed to being recruited in 2014 to help Hamas. Israel informed UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s office and the UNDP director in New York of the engineer’s arrest and details from his indictment.
Israel said the Palestinian engineer managed to persuade his UNDP superiors to prioritize the neighborhoods of Hamas operatives when earmarking money for reconstruction in Gaza, which was devastated by a war by Islamist organizations and Israel during the summer of 2014. “We are seriously looking at it, we are clearly concerned about it. But what we can tell you as UNDP is that in no way what-so-ever UNDP has provided any political group or entity with the ability to influence our decisions and to drive and manipulate our resources, resources that indeed are stemming out of international tax payers’ money,” added Valent. Even though the Palestinian engineer working for the United Nations Development Program reportedly confessed to assisting Hamas, it was not immediately clear how he would plead to the charges against him. Meanwhile, Hamas dismissed the allegations as a bid by Israel, which along with neighboring Egypt impose a blockade on the Gaza Strip to thwart Islamist organizations from smuggling weapons and other materials meant for war, to control the Palestinian enclave.