A United Nations agency handling Palestinian aid is facing renewed congressional scrutiny over its ties to terrorism as Hamas continues its war with Israel.
The Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack against Israel has placed the U.N. Relief and Works Agency in the international spotlight, as Republican lawmakers join national security experts in demanding investigations into reports the UNRWA’s staff is deeply embedded with Hamas and that the organization aids terrorists in the Middle East.
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Concerns about the UNRWA’s tolerance for terrorism have dogged the agency for years. However, its failure to condemn Hamas after terrorists killed more than 1,200 people in Israel and its role in distributing the massive influx of humanitarian aid that is arriving in Gaza as Israel responds to the attack have escalated tensions and led to lawmakers pressing for the UNRWA to be defunded.
“For decades, funding UNRWA has been a form of automatic virtue signaling and support for the myths of Palestinian victimhood,” Gerald Steinberg, president of the Israeli watchdog group NGO Monitor and emeritus political studies professor at Bar Ilan University, told the Washington Examiner. “UNRWA should have been closed years ago to transform the Palestinian economy from total dependence to jobs and growth.”
Former President Donald Trump cut off United States funding to the UNRWA in 2018 over concerns about antisemitism and the agency’s ties to terrorism. President Joe Biden renewed the aid in 2021 and has continued funding the group since, so far sending $730 million in taxpayer dollars to the UNRWA, according to reports.
The Biden administration transferred the aid to the agency despite State Department officials privately worrying in 2021 there was a “high risk” of Hamas deriving an “unintentional benefit from U.S. assistance to Gaza,” internal documents show. The records were obtained by the watchdog group Protect the Public’s Trust and are a window into how the government apparently recognized that American funds sent to Gaza and the West Bank could likely boost terrorism against Israel — but proceeded to send the money anyway.
Congressional Republicans have since stepped up efforts to block funding for the UNRWA until the State Department investigates the group’s relationship with Hamas.
The U.N. General Assembly voted to create the UNRWA in 1949 “to carry out direct relief and works programs for Palestine refugees.” Formed just one year after the 1948 war over the establishment of Israel as an independent state, the UNRWA was originally created as a temporary entity to meet the immediate needs of the 700,000 Palestinians displaced by the creation of Israel at that time.
But roughly 75 years later, the UNRWA claims more than 5 million refugees fall under its authority, extending refugee status to many people who were never displaced and even to some who have full citizenship in other countries where they were born and raised. Although the UNRWA was created as a temporary solution to what many hoped would be a short-term problem, the U.N. has voted to renew the UNRWA’s authority every few years since 1949, most recently extending its mandate until 2026 in a vote last year.
Critics accuse the UNRWA of perpetuating the problem it was created to solve, in part by relieving Hamas of its responsibility to provide basic services to Palestinians in Gaza and allowing it to focus instead on terrorism.
Over the years, the UNRWA has come under fire over reports that it has shared affiliations with terrorists, including in 2017, when the agency parted ways with school principal Suhail al Hindi after learning Hindi was also elected as a Hamas leader. And in 2015, the UNRWA suspended several employees over their Facebook posts inciting violence against Israelis.
One year earlier, the UNRWA faced accusations of slow-walking an investigation into reports that Hamas placed rockets inside at least three schools that it operated. In one case, the UNRWA reportedly returned the rockets it discovered to Hamas.
A spokeswoman for the UNRWA told Foreign Policy in 2021 that the agency’s rules don’t necessarily prevent its employees from having ties to Hamas — only from serving in its leadership ranks.
“For sure they’re not allowed to have a formal political position in Hamas and be UNRWA employees,” the spokeswoman said. “But after that, I don’t know where the line is drawn.”
With primary responsibility for operating schools in Gaza, the UNRWA has been caught teaching extremism to Palestinian children as part of the curriculum it developed alongside the Palestinian Authority. A report published in November by the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education, or IMPACT-se, found that in UNRWA-run schools, “textbooks have remained openly antisemitic and continue to encourage violence, jihad and martyrdom.”
“Extreme nationalism and Islamist ideologies proliferate throughout the curriculum, including in science and math textbooks,” the report found.
The UNRWA has also in the past shared certain affiliations with Interpal, a charity in the United Kingdom that the Treasury Department designated in 2003 as part of a network funding Hamas.
Still, the UNRWA has played a central role in coordinating the international aid pouring into Gaza since the war there began in October.
That’s led GOP lawmakers to increase their scrutiny of the group.
In early December, Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Rep. Mike Waltz (R-FL) requested answers from both Philippe Lazzarini, the Swiss-Italian national who serves as UNRWA’s commissioner, and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres over a viral report from Almog Boker of Israeli Channel 13 that alleged a UNRWA teacher helped hide an Israeli hostage taken captive on Oct. 7.
Blackburn’s letter, in particular, cited a Washington Examiner report from November detailing a watchdog’s findings that UNRWA staff “immediately celebrated and justified” the Hamas-led terrorist attacks.
The report showed that UNRWA teacher Osama Ahmed posted on Facebook on the morning of Oct. 7, “Allah is Great, Allah is Great, reality surpasses our wildest dreams.”
UNRWA school principal Iman Hassan justified the attack on social media as “redressing” Palestinian “grievances,” while the agency’s English teacher, Asmaa Raffia Kuhei, posted on Oct. 7, “7th, October, 2023! Sculpture the date!” along with a heart emoji.
Lawmakers have also raised concerns about the Hamas tunnels located by Israel near UNRWA schools. The UNRWA has publicly condemned the existence of terrorism tunnels — though it faced criticism for not thwarting these threats, as well as, in the view of national security experts, not doing enough to untangle its operations from Hamas, which controls the government of Gaza.
The tunnels shield terrorists during attacks, provide space for keeping hostages and ammunition, and allow for goods and products to be smuggled into Egypt, according to the New York Times. A key element of Israel’s war strategy after Oct. 7 has been to destroy the passageways used by Hamas, including by pumping in seawater, the Times of Israel reported.
“The evidence that employees of U.N. agencies operating in Gaza were closely linked to Hamas was undeniable, and pledges to prevent theft were empty words,” Steinberg said. “Continuing UNRWA funding after the brutal slaughter of Oct. 7 would be even more irresponsible.”
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Reports of Hamas siphoning off humanitarian aid from the UNRWA have already surfaced since the start of the war. The agency claimed in an October post from its X account that Gaza government officials — the government of Gaza is controlled by Hamas — stole fuel and medical equipment from its headquarters, only to delete the post hours later and deny that theft occurred.
The UNRWA did not return a request for comment.
