News / Palestine

Israel sentences UN employee to jail over alleged aid to Hamas

Wednesday, 04 January 2017 6:56 PM [ Last Update: Wednesday, 04 January 2017 6:56 PM ]

Waheed Borsh (C), a Palestinian UN employee, looks on during his indictment at a district court in Be’er Sheva on August 28, 2016. (Photo by AFP)

The Israeli regime has sentenced a Palestinian UN worker to seven months in prison for his alleged assistance to the Gaza-based Palestinian resistance movement, Hamas.

Lea Tsemel, the lawyer representing Waheed Borsh, said on Wednesday that her client was convicted of "rendering services to an illegal organization without intention.”

Borsh, an engineer working for the United Nations Development Programme, was arrested in July on suspicion of having deliberately diverted rubble to a Gazan port to be used for building a purported Hamas jetty.

At the time, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri dismissed the accusations as “false and baseless,” saying they were designed to allow Israel intensify the Gaza siege.

"These (allegations) are par for the course of an Israeli plot to restrict the work of international relief agencies operating in Gaza in order to tighten the Gaza blockade." he said.

Borsh is expected to be released on January 12 under a plea deal, given time he already served and his good behavior.

He had been convicted of unintentionally aiding Hamas for "moving some rubble,” Tsemel said.

A Palestinian worker breaks stones at a factory where the rubble of houses destroyed during Israeli wars are recycled to be reused at construction sites in Gaza City on November 6, 2016. (Photo by AFP)

Since June 2007, the Gaza Strip has been under an Israeli siege that has caused a decline in the standards of living as well as growing unemployment and unrelenting poverty.

The Tel Aviv regime has waged three wars on the coastal enclave since 2008, including the 2014 offensive that left more than 2,200 Palestinians dead.

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