The worldwide charity World Vision says Israel has accused the charity’s Gaza Strip director of funneling what appears to be an impossible sum of money to Hamas. The United Nations expressed “serious concerns” today over allegations a World Vision humanitarian aid worker passed millions of dollars to the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas and its armed wing.
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Israel indicted el-Halabi last Thursday.
Meanwhile, Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development has frozen $1.6 million that was supposed to support new projects in the region, Hareetz reports. Halabi also admitted that he was utilizing his position to take away the humanitarian organization’s money and resources from the needy “to benefit of Hamas’s terrorist and military activities”.
World Vision has been working in the occupied Palestinian territories for over 40 years, striving to give hope to over 500,000 of the most vulnerable children, through education, health, child protection and resilience programs.
Representative Akiva Tor met with World Vision official Kent Hill on Thursday to discuss the matter. “We continue to call for a fair, legal process for Mohammad”. The agency said Halabi purposefully inflated project costs and created suspicious projects to divert cash.
In an interview with The New York Times, an unnamed official with Shin Bet accused Halabi of joining Hamas over 12 years ago and being instructed to infiltrate the charity.
Former Shin Bet director Avi Dichter, now the head of the Knesset’s influential Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, said Monday that the problem of aid organizations funneling money to Hamas is widespread, but the world remains “naive” to the seriousness of the problem.
Israel’s Shin Bet security agency says Mohammed el-Halabi confessed to siphoning about $7.2 million a year to Hamas over a period of five years.
Holten says “there is a huge gap in these numbers the Israeli government is telling and what we know”.
Further media reports have claimed he is accused of funnelling approximately £5.3m a year of World Vision funds to Hamas – including some £60,000 worth of British donations.
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Nonetheless, World Vision has halted its Gaza operations while investigations are ongoing, Holten said. She said she discovered this while her group researched a lawsuit against the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which in the past was involved in attacking Israelis.
