A U.N. relief agency that oversees Palestinian refugee camps protested to the Israeli authorities Thursday over the detention of its personnel and seizure of documents by the Israeli army.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees lodged its complaints in Jerusalem and with the Israeli mission to UNRWA headquarters in Vienna.
Israeli forces reportedly broke into the UNRWA food distribution center in the Deir el-Balah refugee camp in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, and confiscated papers from the office of the UNRWA refugee services officer responsible for four refugee camps in the Gaza Strip.
When international UNRWA personnel confronted the soldiers, they were detained but released after questioning.
In the West Bank the same day, three local UNRWA employees were arrested for questioning and documents were seized from their offices.
The employees were the camp service officers at the Jalazoun, Dehaishe and Fawwar refugee camps.
The U.N. complaint elicited a sympathetic reaction from the United States.
“As a general matter, we regret any actions that interfere with UNRWA’s important humanitarian operations in providing education, medical and relief services to Palestinian refugees,” State Department spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler said at a news briefing in Washington on Thursday.
Tutwiler said that agency sources confirmed two incidents “involving intrusion by Israeli forces into their facilities. We have called on all parties to exercise maximum restraint to avoid the kinds of confrontations described in these reports,” she said.
UNRWA accused the Israeli military of “serious breaches of the privileges and immunities which the agency enjoys as an international body providing humanitarian services to Palestine refugees in the occupied territory.”
Senior security sources said the army was investigating suspicions that UNRWA officials were involved in anti-Israel activities outside the UNRWA mandate.
The official said the investigations and detentions were conducted under the close supervision of the Israeli legal authorities, following consultation with the Foreign Ministry.
There was no violation of UNRWA privileges, he said.
(JTA correspondent Howard Rosenberg in Washington contributed to this report.)
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