This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

World Vision has cancelled the contracts of 120 Palestinian employees in Gaza, staff said on Friday, amid Israeli allegations that the NGO’s Gaza director had diverted millions to Hamas. A senior World Vision source confirmed the redundancies.

An employee who declined to be identified, said: “They informed 120 employees from World Vision in Gaza they were officially cancelling their contracts and stopping all their projects in the enclave.”

“The head of the NGO in Palestine and a number of foreign staff met on August 9 with Palestinian employees in the Gaza office and gave them documents to sign which they did,” he said.

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Agence France-Presse saw a copy of the document which said World Vision “is facing a major crisis that has affected the international NGO, including the source of its funding, and due to this crisis all our activities have been suspended in Gaza”.

Senior employees would be kept on partial salaries, the World Vision source said.



The employee said World Vision promised to take back the staff once the crisis was resolved.

Last month Israel charged the Gaza head of the US-based Christian charity, Mohammad El Halabi, with diverting millions of dollars in both materials and cash to Hamas, including its armed wing.

An official from the Shin Bet security service said it amounted to over $7m a year, with up to 60% of the of the NGO’s operating costs allegedly siphoned off.

The NGO has disputed the allegations, saying it has seen no evidence presented by Israel.

It said in a statement the “cumulative operating budget in Gaza for the past 10 years was approximately $22.5m, which makes the alleged amount of up to $50m being diverted hard to reconcile.”

The court case is to be held in secret, with Halabi’s lawyer saying discussing details could mean jail.

Israel argues the secrecy is necessary for security reasons.