NEW YORK: Israel has paid the United Nations $10.5 million for property damage and injuries the world body suffered during Israel’s attack on Gaza a year ago, a UN spokesman and Israeli diplomats said on Friday.
“With this payment, the United Nations has agreed that the financial issues relating to those incidents ... are concluded,” spokesman Martin Nesirky told reporters.
A senior Israeli diplomat at the United Nations, who asked not to be named, said, “We have decided to make an ex gratia (without liability) payment to the United Nations and we have indeed done it.” “It has to do specifically with damages done to the United Nations,” whose Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) cares for Palestinian refugees in Gaza and elsewhere in the Middle East, the diplomat said. He and Nesirky both quoted the figure of $10.5 million.
UN officials said the world body had made claims for damage done during previous Israeli military operations, but they believed this was the first time Israel had paid.
A UN inquiry last year put the cost of damage to seven UN buildings in Gaza during the December 2008-January 2009 conflict at $11.2 million, almost all of it caused by Israeli forces. Loss adjusters hired by the UN subsequently reduced that by $750,000, Nesirky said.
The main damage to UN property in Gaza came on Jan. 15, 2009, when Israeli shells, some containing the incendiary substance white phosphorus, hit an UNRWA compound, badly damaging a warehouse and training center. Several UN-run schools were hit in other strikes. The Jewish state agreed to consider a UN reimbursement request sent in July. Nesirky said that claim related both to the property damage and to minor injuries suffered by 11 UN employees.
Israel insisted throughout that it bore no legal responsibility, although the United Nations disagreed. In the end, “the United Nations and Israel agreed to put the question of legal responsibility to one side for the purposes of settling the organization’s claim,” Nesirky said.
The Israeli diplomat said his country was not terming the payment compensation and portrayed the negotiations as having being conducted with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon personally.
“We understand that there have been damages and that the Secretary-General cares about it, and this is important for him, and it’s also important for us what the UN is doing in Gaza,” he said.
Israel’s onslaught on Gaza killed more than 1,400 Palestinians, including civilians and Hamas fighters. A total of 13 Israelis were killed.
Meanwhile, Israel is heading toward a new war with Lebanon’s militant movement Hezbollah, a Cabinet minister warned Saturday in remarks carried by military radio and the popular Ynet news website.
“We are heading toward a new confrontation in the north but I don’t know when it will happen, just as we did not know when the second Lebanon war would erupt,” said Yossi Peled, a minister without portfolio and a reserve army general.
He was referring to the devastating war Israel fought with Hezbollah in 2006, which killed more than 1,200 Lebanese, most of them civilians, and more than 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers.
“Although Hezbollah is part of the Lebanese government, the latter has no influence on it,” Peled said, adding the Jewish state will hold Hezbollah and its ally Syria responsible for any attack on Israel. Israeli officials have repeatedly warned in recent weeks that any attack by Hezbollah would be met with a strong response. Last week Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned Lebanon and Hezbollah against any attempt to undermine the “calm” prevailing at the border between the two countries.
