While Israel's allies ramp up pressure to allow the United Nations Relief Works Agency for Palestine (UNRWA) back into Gaza, Israelis have plenty of reasons to refuse. Since the October 7 massacre took place, the IDF has found evidence of coordination between UNRWA and Hamas, including communications, weapons storage, and even personnel. Israel revealed today that they have arrested eight UNRWA workers connected to Hamas since the war started, and that's just the tip of the iceberg:

Eight UNRWA employees working in the Gaza Strip have been arrested by the IDF due to connections to Hamas, according to a Maariv report on Thursday.

The report, which cites a secret document that has been obtained by Maariv, claimed that the employees have circumstantial evidence linking them directly with Hamas, and they have been transferred to Israel for further investigation. ...

The actual arrest of the employees was reported to have spanned over the past few months of fighting, from October until February. One of the detainees is even suspected of participating in the massacre that Hamas conducted on October 7, according to the report.

It's more than one UNRWA worker, as Ayelet Samerano made clear earlier this week. Her son Yonatan got killed in the invasion and had his lifeless body dragged back to Gaza by one of the terrorists. That terrorist turned out to be an UNRWA employee, a fact apparently confirmed by the Washington Post:

"A UNRWA worker kidnapped my son's body. How can a social worker for an organization that claims to promote good in this world do something so cruel and inhumane? How can the UN pay this man who dragged my son’s limp body on the ground, and then picked him as if he was a trophy back to Gaza?" Samerano pleaded. 

Video footage was also shown depicting the horrific kidnapping of Yonatan's lifeless body by Hamas terrorists at Kibbutz Be'eri, the location he had fled to from the NOVA music festival to seek safety. One of the terrorists involved in Yonatan’s death and kidnapping was later confirmed to be a UNRWA employee by a Washington Post investigation.

“How many more lives have been ruined by this person hauling my son like he is not even a human being into a UNRWA vehicle? Does the UN hold my son? Do they know where he is? Bring him back to me. Are there any other hostages held by UN employees even as we speak?" declared Samerano.

Perhaps the United Nations should answer that question before it asks to have UNRWA funding restored by Western nations. 

The US intelligence community tried to cast some cold water on Israeli claims with a report out today that has received plenty of "pouncing" from Israel's opponents. Israel had claimed that up to 2,000 of UNRWA's Gaza contingent of 12,000 employees had connections to Hamas, with an estimated 440 being flat-out Hamas terrorists. According to i24, US intelligence services don't find that assessment credible, but only in scope:

The report suggests that while some UNRWA employees may have participated in Hamas’s October 7 assault on Israel, the U.S. cannot independently verify Israeli assertions regarding a broader scope of UNRWA staff members having links to militant groups. ...

According to Israeli intelligence, approximately 10 percent of UNRWA workers were found to have affiliations, often political, with Hamas. However, the number directly linked to the militant wings of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad was much smaller. UNRWA employs around 12,000 individuals in Gaza. ...

The U.S. intelligence assessment, completed last week, acknowledges the plausibility of some UNRWA staff members’ involvement in the October 7 attack, but it offers a more cautious evaluation compared to public statements made by U.S. and Israeli officials.

So what level of infiltration and collaboration of UNRWA do US agencies estimate? A thousand connected to Hamas, 220 terrorists employed? 500 and 110? If the UN wants its operations funded, those numbers should be zero and zero. 

Furthermore, this is hair-splitting on behalf of genocidal maniacs. The IDF has uncovered weapons caches in and around UNRWA facilities. We know from other Gazans that Hamas controls the distribution of aid from UNRWA and other organizations and directs it to its own fighters and supporters. After seventeen years and billions in Western dollars flowing into Gaza through UNRWA and others, Hamas' leaders have become billionaires and have turned Gaza into a military fortress with the express purpose of annihilating Israel. They did that with broad cooperation and support from Gazans, who thought it was going well until the Israelis decided that they had to put an end to Hamas in order to survive.

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. The West has no obligation to support corrupt "aid" organizations, and no obligation to support terrorist quasi-states either. That's especially true while Gazans conspire to hide more than a hundred kidnapped Israelis and assist Hamas in using them as human shields and leverage for Israeli concessions, all of which violate all international rules of war.

On that score, there does seem to be progress in negotiations:

Israel will likely decide late Thursday night on whether to send a negotiating team to Paris for a fresh round of hostage talks over the weekend, an Israeli official told The Times of Israel, as reports signaled increased flexibility from the Hamas terror group. ...

An Israeli official told The Times of Israel Wednesday evening that leaders remain cautious about the chances for a breakthrough in negotiations for a hostage deal.

Don't get your hopes up too high. Hamas still wants Israel to withdraw as a condition for any hostage exchange:

On Thursday, Mousa Abu Marzouk, a senior official with the terror group, said there could be a breakthrough in the talks in the near future.

In an interview with the Egyptian Al-Ghad channel, Abu Marzouk indicated that the main obstacle for Hamas is Israel’s refusal to withdraw its ground forces from the Gaza Strip, especially from the north-south Salah al-Din axis and the coastal Rashid Street.

He reiterated that Hamas’s conditions for a ceasefire are a cessation of hostilities and the return of displaced people to northern Gaza. He added that the terror group demands the release of 500 Palestinian prisoners for every Israeli hostage and vowed that Hamas “will continue its struggle until victory or martyrdom” and will not lay down its weapons.

Those are non-starters for Israel. If Gazans want an end to the war they started, they can formally capitulate and surrender their leadership to the IDF. It's long past time to restore the proper pricing signals to war-starting and especially war crimes such as those committed en masse on October 7.