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Newly surfaced material published on Sept. 4 by Gabriel Epstein, a Senior Policy Associate at Israel Policy Forum, indicates that Abdallah Nabhan, an employee of Belgium’s state-owned development agency Enabel, appears to have been a member of Hamas’s Khan Younis Brigade.
Nabhan worked for Enabel from April 2020 until his death in an Israeli airstrike in Rafah in April 2024. Enabel is a public-law company wholly owned by the Belgian state and serves as one of Belgium’s principal vehicles for implementing international development programs.
Enabel Condemned Strike as Attack on ‘Innocent Civilians’
Following Nabhan’s death in 2024, Enabel identified him as a Business Development Officer working on a European project supporting small businesses in Gaza and described him as a “very dedicated and valued colleague.”
Israel’s ambassador to Belgium, Idit Rosenzweig-Abu, said following the strike that the house where Nabhan and his relatives were staying belonged to a senior Hamas operative from Nabhan’s extended family and that the operative was the intended target of the airstrike.
Enabel condemned the strike as an attack on “innocent civilians,” while Managing Director Jean Van Wetter called it a “flagrant violation” of international humanitarian law. The agency also said Nabhan, like its other employees in Gaza, had been included on a list of people eligible to leave the territory that had been submitted to Israeli authorities months earlier. Enabel later dedicated its 2023–2024 annual report to Nabhan and his son.
New Material Identifies Nabhan as ‘Mujahid’
The material uncovered by Epstein presents a significantly different picture of the Enabel employee.
According to Epstein’s research, the Hikaya Khan Younis obituary channel published a poster identifying Nabhan as a “mujahid” and displaying a photograph appearing to show him in military uniform. Epstein concluded that Nabhan “appears to have been a member of Hamas’ Khan Younis Brigade.”
Questions Over European-Funded Staffing
Enabel says its international portfolio has grown to roughly €500 million annually, with at least half of its funding originating from the Belgian state.
Nabhan’s position placed him inside that publicly funded development system, working on a European-backed program intended to support businesses in Gaza.
The newly surfaced material therefore raises questions about the safeguards used to vet personnel working on Western-funded programs in conflict zones, and whether those systems are capable of detecting employees simultaneously affiliated with terrorist organizations such as Hamas.