AMMAN, October 13 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - The head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees demanded Wednesday, October 13, that Israel apologize for wrongfully accusing UNRWA of allowing Palestinians to smuggle rockets in its ambulances.

“I wish to have an apology,” Peter Hansen told a meeting in Jordan of representatives of major donor countries to the UN agency.

“I would like to see as much energy spent in withdrawing these accusations as there was energy in making them.”

Israeli television broadcast video footage earlier in the month of what it claimed were Palestinian “militants” loading a Qassam rocket launcher into a vehicle with the United Nations logo on the roof.

The Israeli army said that one of its drones had shot the footage above Jabaliya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip, the scene of an open-ended bloody Israeli raid.

Hansen had said it was easy to prove that the suspicious looking object in the black and white footage is a stretcher.

He said the object carried by one of the two men could not weigh more than a few kilos, noting that a Qassam rocket weighed at least 50 kilos.

A Qassam rocket, the UNRWA chief added, is 1.80 meters long and has a diameter of 17 centimeters, while the photos revealed an object 5 centimeters wide.

Israel Admits

Hansen’s comments came after the Israeli army admitted it was “wrong” to accuse the UNRWA.

“After a thorough review of the material, the nature of the object loaded on the vehicle cannot be determined with certainty,” the Israeli army said in a tortuously-worded statement Tuesday, October 12.

“Thus, the determination that the object loaded was a Qassam rocket was too unequivocal and made in haste.”

Commenting on its rapid widespread distribution of the grainy footage, the army said “lessons learned will be implemented to prevent a recurrence of such an incident in the future”.

Speaking to the parliament's foreign affairs and defense committee early Tuesday, the army's official spokeswoman Ruth Yaron also admitted, in slightly clearer language, that the assessment had been wrong.

“It is obvious today, after all the inquiries made into the question, that it wasn't a Qassam rocket,” she told Ha’aretz.

In the wake of the affair, Israel immediately lodged a strongly-worded protest with the United Nations.

Several days later, a UN team arrived in Israel to investigate the allegations, which sparked a furious war of words that culminated in Israeli demands for the dismissal of Hansen on the grounds that he “hates Israel ”.

Hansen lashed out at Israel in a letter sent to Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom, labeling the Israeli accusations as “malicious propaganda” that endangered the lives of UN staff in the Gaza Strip.