The dispute has raised real questions about the degree to which either Israeli soldiers or United Nations workers here, two groups emotionally and physically battered by two years of warfare, are succeeding in distinguishing friend from foe.

Killing of U.N. Aide by Israel Bares Rift With Relief Agency
The last time Iain Hook called Israeli forces, on a cellphone from a United Nations compound in the West Bank town of Jenin, he was looking for help. Outside the compound walls, a skirmish had flared between Israel's Army and Palestinian militants. Mr. Hook and his staff were trapped.

Palestinian militants had knocked a hole in the wall, he said. "I'm trying to keep them out," he said, according to transcripts of the call published in the Israeli press. "I will just keep my people pinned down in the corner until I hear from you. Okay?"

It was not okay. Minutes later, as he stood, cellphone in hand, under a corrugated roof in the compound's small collection of prefab offices, Mr. Hook was shot in the back by an Israeli soldier who, the Israeli Army says, was returning fire from Palestinian militants inside the United Nations building.

When the army detained an ambulance, co-workers evacuated Mr. Hook through the hole in the wall the militants had made. He died before reaching a hospital.

The death of Mr. Hook, a 54-year-old British supervisor for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, has laid bare a remarkable breakdown of trust between the Israeli government and the United Nations, the very organization which gave birth to Israel almost 55 years ago.

Since Mr. Hook's death, on Nov. 22, furious United Nations workers in the West Bank and Gaza have accused the Israeli Army in an open letter of "senseless" and "wanton" behavior and cataloged what they say are repeated abuses and humiliations at the hands of its troops.

"U.N. staff — international and Palestinian alike — have been verbally abused, stripped, beaten, shot at and killed by Israeli soldiers," more than 60 foreign workers for the agency wrote in their letter, written days after Mr. Hook's death.

Officially, Israel says it is investigating the death. Its explanation for the killing remains what it was from the outset: that its soldiers were returning gunfire from Palestinian militants who had forced their way into the United Nations compound.

The unofficial response has been far more blunt: a damning intelligence report, leaked to newspapers last month, charging that operations of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in the West Bank and Gaza provide cover for Palestinian terrorists.

The dispute has spiraled up all the way to the United Nations Security Council, where in December the United States vetoed a resolution condemning Israel for Mr. Hook's death.

The intelligence report cited Israeli interrogations of suspected Palestinian militants, some identified, as evidence that guerrillas have hijacked the relief agency's schools, ambulances and even workers in the 27-month-old Palestinian uprising.

United Nations officials say Israel has yet to give the relief agency any evidence that it tolerates subversion. A ranking Israeli official said flatly in an interview that the agency had nevertheless been derelict by not moving to stop it.

"They don't report to the U.N. about any such activity," said the official, who spoke only on condition of anonymity. "They know nothing, they see nothing, they hear nothing. I think they have taken sides in the conflict. They do not have the impartiality needed by a U.N. organization."

Some relief workers for the United Nations and other agencies disagree. It is Israel, they say, that has lost its objectivity and begun regarding anyone who extends a hand to a Palestinian as an enemy.

The dispute has raised real questions about the degree to which either Israeli soldiers or United Nations workers here, two groups emotionally and physically battered by two years of warfare, are succeeding in distinguishing friend from foe.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/04/international/middleeast/04ISRA.html?pagewanted=all&position=top