UN teacher by day … Islamists' chief bomb-maker at night
By Adam Entous 
May 6, 2008 
Scotsman.com News
Original Source: http://news.scotsman.com/world/UN-teacher-by-day-.4051847.jp
	
BY DAY, Awad al-Qiq was a respected teacher and headmaster at a United Nations school in the Gaza Strip. By night, he built rockets for Islamic Jihad.
The Israeli air strike that killed the 33-year-old last week also laid bare his apparent double life and embarrassed a UN agency that has long had to reject Israeli accusations that it has aided and abetted guerrillas fighting the Jewish state.

Students and colleagues, as well as UN officials, denied any knowledge of Qiq's work with explosives. And his family denied he had any militant links, despite a profusion of Islamic Jihad posters at his home.

But militant leaders allied to the enclave's ruling Hamas group have hailed him as a martyr who led Islamic Jihad's engineering unit – its bomb makers. They fired improvised rockets into Israel in response to his death.

Qiq's body was wrapped in an Islamic Jihad flag at his funeral, posters in his honour still bedeck his family home and a notice posted on the school gate declared that Qiq, the chief leader of the engineering unit, would now find paradise.

The poster was removed soon after reporters visited the Rafah Prep Boys School, run by the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees. Staff there said yesterday that UNRWA officials had told them not to discuss Qiq's activities. No-one from the UN attended the funeral or has paid their respects to the family, relatives said. 

The Israeli army said its 30 April attack at Rafah, close to the Egyptian border, hit a workshop used for making rockets and other improvised weaponry. An Israeli intelligence source said Qiq was involved in developing rockets and mortars.

Yet Qiq, a physics graduate with eight years' experience of teaching at UNRWA schools, was also described by colleagues as a rising star in education. Relatives said he was promoted to run the school last year, with the title of deputy headmaster. The Qiq case highlights the complexities of life among the 1.5 million people of the Gaza Strip, where close to half voted for Hamas in 2006. 

Hamas fighters join Islamic Jihad in campaigns of rockets and suicide bombing in pursuit of a stated goal of recovering all Palestinian lands lost to Israel.

Qiq's high profile as a public figure is unusual enough to cause considerable interest among those in Gaza who were surprised by the funeral arrangements. Sympathies for guerrillas, who number in the tens of thousands, are widespread, despite Israeli efforts to discredit Hamas and its allies by choking food and fuel supplies.

That tactic has also set Israel and UNRWA at odds. The agency, set up to care for Palestinian refugees, has spoken out against what it calls collective punishment of civilians.

Surrounded by Islamic Jihad mourning posters at the family home, Qiq's sister Naima insisted: He's only a teacher and head of the school. School was his life. He had no time to work with Islamic Jihad. Other family members nodded in agreement. At the school, a 17-year-old who gave his name as Shadi read a poster for his former teacher and said simply: Nobody knew.

At the bombed-out workshop two miles from the school, damaged cars can be seen through now-locked gates. Abu Mohammed, 35, said he found Qiq dying inside after helicopters fired a missile at the building.

Relatives recalled with pride that Qiq had met John Ging, UNRWA's Gaza operations director. But while fellow teachers had come to pay their respects, they saw no UN representative.

Qiq's sister said his wife and five children were worried by the lack of news on any pension payment: Awad did a lot for UNRWA, she said. The family hoped UNRWA would support them.

Zero tolerance on politics

ISRAEL has long alleged that militants use UN Relief and Works Agency vehicles and facilities. The UN has denied those charges, although some UNRWA employees have had prominent political roles in groups like Hamas – such as teacher Saeed Seyam, who was the interior minister in the Hamas-led government elected in 2006.

Some western officials say UNRWA, as one of the biggest employers in the Gaza Strip, simply reflects the society it serves. But donors such as the United States, which fund the body's work, insist on vetting procedures to ensure their cash does not reach groups they class as terrorists – such as Islamic Jihad.

A UNRWA spokesman, Christopher Gunness, said: We have a zero-tolerance policy towards politics and militant activities in our schools.

But he added: Obviously, we are not the thought police and we cannot police people's minds.