Claim: The ID of a UNRWA teacher, Hani S. Zourob, was found on Yahya Sinwar at the time of his death and belonged to one of the two bodyguards killed along with the Hamas leader on 17 October.
Fact: The ID card of Sinwar’s alleged bodyguard is actually an expired passport belonging to a UNRWA worker who evacuated to Egypt in April. The staff member in question is still alive, as confirmed by Commissioner General of UNRWA Philippe Lazzarini.
On 17 October 2024, a user on X (formerly Twitter) posted an image (archive) of a passport that belonged to a UNRWA teacher. The post is captioned,
“One of Sinwar’s bodyguards, who was also was eliminated today, was a teacher in
@UNRWA dangers on behalf of the @UN
Shocking 😮
Not really ”
UNRWA
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) was created after the mass displacement of Palestinians following the 1948 War. It was created through the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 302 (IV) and aims to provide direct relief and work programs for Palestinian refugees. Given the ongoing displacement of Palestinians and the lack of a resolution to the refugee issue, the General Assembly has repeatedly extended UNRWA’s mandate, with the most recent extension lasting until 30 June 2026. UNRWA’s mission is to assist Palestinians by providing services in education, healthcare, relief, social welfare, camp infrastructure, microfinance, and emergency aid, particularly during armed conflicts. As such, the UNRWA has maintained a place in Gaza assisting displaced people and providing services to communities that lack them.
Since 7 October and the eruption of the war in Gaza, the UNRWA has been under fierce scrutiny and has faced accusations and criticism by the Israeli government for harbouring Hamas terrorists. Most grievously, in January 2024 Israel accused at least 12 UNRWA workers of participating or aiding in the 7 October attack. The accusation led to multiple countries’ suspension of aid to the agency. These accusations were compiled in a dossier and shared with US government officials. On 4 February 2024, The Jerusalem Post reported that Netanyahu called for the end of the UNRWA saying, “We exposed to the world that UNRWA is collaborating with Hamas, that some of its people even participated in the atrocities and abductions of October 7,” and that, “the time has come to begin the process of replacing UNRWA with other bodies”. That same month The Times of Israel reported that Netanyahu also repeated this desire to UN ambassadors, saying “We need to get other UN agencies and other aid agencies replacing UNRWA.”
The UN began a probe into 19 UNRWA employees, which concluded in August 2024 that only nine of the investigated UNRWA workers “may have been involved in the 7 October attacks” and promptly removed them from service. The UN also pushed back on the accusations claiming Israel provided none of the evidence to back their allegations and that many UNRWA employees reported being coerced and tortured into false confessions by Israel.
In a June 2024 op-ed for the New York Times, UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini spoke of the genuine consequences of these accusations writing, “at least 197 UNRWA employees have been killed in Gaza. Nearly 190 UNRWA premises have been damaged or destroyed. UNRWA-run schools have been demolished; at least 520 displaced people have been killed while sheltered inside UNRWA schools and other structures. Since Oct. 7, Israeli security forces have rounded up UNRWA personnel in Gaza, who have alleged torture and mistreatment while in detention in the Strip and in Israel.”
Yahya Sinwar
Yahya Sinwar was a Palestinian militant associated with Hamas and was considered to be one of the most influential figures in Palestine. In 2017, Sinwar was elected as the Hamas Chief of the Gaza Strip, and on 6 August 2024 he was selected as the leader of the Hamas political bureau following the assassination of former leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. Sinwar has been credited with many key aspects of Hamas, such as founding the Al-Majd security apparatus and helping establish Hamas’s military wing the Al-Qassam Brigades. According to Al Jazeera, Sinwar was also seen by Israel as the mastermind behind the 7 October attack.
On 17 October 2024, the Israeli government announced the death of Sinwar after an attack during a routine military inspection of a region in Southern Gaza killed him. The Israeli military later released footage from the drone showing Sinwar sitting in a chair with his face covered in a Keffiyeh. On 18 October, Hamas confirmed his death during a televised address.
Fact or Fiction?
Sinwar was killed on 16 October 2024 on Ibn Sena Street in Rafah, southern Gaza. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had reportedly not known he would be present in the area when a soldier spotted suspicious figures entering and exiting a building. Soon after, the IDF noted three figures through the use of drones, later confirmed to be Sinwar and his bodyguard Mahmoud Hamdan, with the third remaining unnamed. Sinwar died after the building collapsed on him. His location was a surprise to the IDF, and to the residents of the building. The IDF later released drone footage that shows the Hamas leader sitting in a chair seemingly injured, before his death.
This claim contains two main aspects worth investigating: firstly that a UNRWA ID card was found amongst Sinwar’s or his bodyguard’s belongings at their time of death, and second that the ID confirmed one of the bodyguards killed along with Sinwar was a UNRWA teacher.
The image of Sinwar’s belongings from the viral claim was originally posted (archive) on X by an Israeli journalist for Israel’s Channel 12 News Amit Segal. The photos were of items allegedly found on Yahya Sinwar at the time of his death, such as mentos, a lighter, and significantly, a passport. He captioned the post, “Mentos, money, an AK-47, a lighter, and a UNRWA employee ID: this is what was found on the body of the arch-terrorist Yahya Sinwar.” However, nowhere does Segal’s tweet mention that the UNRWA ID belonged to Sinwar’s bodyguard.
Soch Fact Check also failed to find any public statements or social media posts from the IDF or the State of Israel confirming the authenticity of the photos and the claim that they show the items that were found in Yahya Sinwar’s possession at the time of his death. We have reached out to Amit Segal to verify the source of his photograph, but have yet to hear back from him.
As such, Soch Fact Check has been unable to independently verify that these photos display Sinwar’s belongings found at the time of his death. Several other news outlets also struggled to verify the origin of this photo. The Washington Examiner reached out to the IDF on the issue, but they declined to comment while The Telegraph, a British news outlet, confirmed they were unable to independently verify where the passport was found.
Soch Fact Check observed the viral images of the ID and noted key details. First and foremost, the document is not a UNRWA ID card as claimed by many, it is a passport issued by the Palestinian Authority, as seen in the encircled section in the photo below:
Secondly, the passport clearly displays all the important information about the holder:
Namely, that the holder is a man named Hani H.S. Zourob, who was born in 1984 in Rafah. Zourob’s photo is also clearly displayed beside his details.
In regards to the photo, Zourob and Sinwar look significantly different from each other. Sinwar looks visibly older with grey hair and a beard, while Zourob has close-cropped black hair. Sinwar and Zourob’s lips and jawline also look significantly different. Additionally, Sinwar was born in 1962, making him 62 years old, a sharp contrast to the holder’s age of 40. Finally, the passport lists its date of expiration as 2017, several years before the war on Gaza began, making it a currently invalid passport.
Soon after the initial post by Segal, the viral post in question claimed that the document belonged to Sinwar’s bodyguard who was killed alongside him and that he was a teacher at the UNRWA. But Soch Fact Check found that claim to be provably false as well. While the passport does detail Zourob’s profession as a UNRWA teacher, the passport belonged to a man who already fled Gaza, not one of the bodyguards found with Sinwar. Nurit Yohanan, the Palestinian affairs correspondent from Kann News, an Israeli outlet, found a Facebook post from Zourob in which he confirmed he had already evacuated to Egypt.
[Translation: Good people, I am in Egypt and have nothing to do with anything.]
As of writing time, however, the post seems to have been removed from Zourob’s Facebook page.
Zourob’s departure to Egypt was further confirmed by Gaza Notifications, a verified media outlet that delivers on-the-ground coverage of the conflict. In an X post, the outlet posted images they had procured of Zourob’s travel documents, including his passport. The photo below displays Zourob’s current passport:
In this passport, important details such as place of birth, date of birth, and name of the mother, are the same as in the expired passport, thus confirming the authenticity of the photo. Additionally, this passport also lists Zourob’s profession as a UNRWA teacher. Another photo shows a visa stamp from Egypt:
A third photo shows a travel document for Zourob issued by the Palestinian Embassy in Egypt. This document was issued in April 2024 when Zourob evacuated to Egypt.
Finally, Commissioner General of UNRWA Philippe Lazzarini issued a statement on X categorically denying the claim writing, “I confirm that the staff member in question is alive. He currently lives in Egypt where he traveled with his family in April through the Rafah border.” Lazzarini also called out the claims made as “unchecked information is used to discredit @UNRWA & its staff” terming them as “disinformation campaigns.”
Whether the expired passport was found in Sinwar’s belongings at the time of his death, also remains unconfirmed, as of publishing time. However, with the ongoing crisis in Gaza and rapid community evacuations, it is likely that Zourob’s expired passport was left behind in Rafah, his home and the last known location of Sinwar. Similar to how Zourob’s passport may have been forgotten, Rafah residents have reportedly faced comparably confusing discoveries: According to the BBC, Ashraf Abo Taha, a Rafah resident on Ibn Sena street, was stunned to find out that the Hamas leader had used his home as his final refuge, a place he and his family had evacuated months earlier in May. Taha emphasised he had no connections to Hamas, stating, “Never ever did me and my brothers and sons have anything to do with this.”
Thus Soch Fact Check concludes that Hani Zourab, a UNRWA teacher, was not one of the two bodyguards who died alongside Yahya Sinwar on 17 October. Zourob evacuated to Egypt in April 2024 and is still alive. Claims on social media suggesting as such are false.
Virality
Soch Fact Check found the claim on X here, here, and here garnering close to a million views.
Conclusion: The UNRWA ID allegedly found among Yahya Sinwar’s possessions is an expired passport belonging to a resident of Rafah, Hani Zourob, who is currently in Egypt after evacuating from Gaza in April 2024. He is not one of the two bodyguards killed alongside Sinwar.
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