Israel’s internal security agency, the Shin Bet, announced that one of nine people it had arrested from a ring that smuggled guns from Hamas in Gaza to the West Bank was an employee of the French consulate in Jerusalem, The Times of Israel reported Monday.
Romain Franck, a French citizen and a driver at the consulate, was accused of taking advantage of relaxed inspections of diplomatic vehicles to smuggle guns between and the West Bank five times. According to the charges, Franck smuggled 70 pistols and two assault rifles to the West Bank. He had transported unspecified valuables from Gaza on behalf of Zuheir Abed Abdeen, an employee of the French Cultural Center in Gaza, when Abdeen asked him in September of last year if he would participate in a gun-running ring led by Mahmad Jamil al-Haladi, a resident of Gaza.
Franck agreed, and together with Mahmad Siad, an Israeli citizen who worked at the French consulate in Jerusalem, delivered the weapons to the West Bank. When stopped at the border, Franck would falsely claim that all items in his trunk were his and that he didn’t have any weapons in his vehicle. He was paid several thousand shekels for each run. The amount would vary based on the number of weapons he transported.
According to the Shin Bet, Franck’s superiors were unaware of his illicit activities and that the driver was motivated by financial gain.
This isn’t the first time that diplomats or aid organizations have been implicated in helping Hamas.
In August 2016 Israel arrested the Gaza director of the international aid organization WorldVision for channeling millions of dollars from the charity to Hamas, and a few days later arrested an engineer with the United Nations Development Program was arrested for assisting the Gaza-based terror group.
In addition, the United Nations Relief Works Agency, the agency devoted solely to helping Palestinian refugees, has long been implicated for the degree to which it cooperates with Hamas. In 2014, investigative journalist Claudia Rosett charged that UNRWA, by becoming the effective civilian authority in Gaza, allowing Hamas to build up its terror infrastructure. Aside from that, there have been a number of instances where UNRWA aided Hamas directly. During the 2014 war with Israel, Hamas was found to be storing rockets in UNRWA-run schools. In one instance, UNRWA returned rockets found on its property to Hamas, and a terror tunnel was found inside of an UNRWA marked clinic.
In 2015, UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness spoke at an event sponsored by a Hamas-linked charity and last year at least two UNRWA employees were elected to leadership positions in Hamas, though one was later suspended by UNRWA.
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