The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) presents itself as a neutral humanitarian body. The evidence shows it is not.

Founded in 1949 — the year after Israel’s independence — UNRWA operates with an annual budget of over $1 billion, funded largely by European governments, international NGOs, and, until President Donald Trump, the United States. It employs roughly 32,000 people and provides year-round aid to Arab refugees across the Levant and Europe. On paper, it looks like a standard relief agency. In practice, it functions as a front for Islamic terror groups in Gaza.

Deeply Embedded Terror Ties

UNRWA’s connections to terrorism are decades old and well-documented. As far back as 2004, then-Commissioner-General Peter Hansen openly admitted he knew Hamas members were on the agency’s payroll and expressed no concern about it. 

UNRWA does not recognize Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, or the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) as terrorist organizations — a foundational position that shapes everything the agency does.

Following the October 7th massacre of 1,200 Israeli civilians, the scale of UNRWA’s infiltration became impossible to ignore. A U.S. investigation identified at least 1,500 UNRWA staff members with ties to Hamas. The USAID Office of Inspector General referred 101 additional employees for debarment or suspension based on direct participation in the attack. Those referred included school principals, teachers, medical professionals, security personnel, and psychosocial counselors — the very people entrusted with the welfare of Palestinians.

The Trump administration is now reportedly considering designating UNRWA a foreign terrorist organization.

Classrooms That Incubate Terrorism

UNRWA’s educational system has been a particular focal point for concern. Reports by UN Watch have documented in detail how UNRWA operatives, working in coordination with the Palestinian Authority — itself a subsidiary of the Marxist PLO — use schools to teach antisemitism, Holocaust denial, and Muslim supremacy in the territories the PA administers. 

After October 7th, UNRWA teachers were documented glorifying the massacre to their students in class.

UNRWA schools are also used to train children to support ISIS.

A Pipeline for Hamas Resources

Beyond ideology, UNRWA serves as an operational and financial engine for Hamas. IDF operations have uncovered Hamas command centers, weapons caches, and tunnels built beneath or inside UNRWA schools and headquarters — including one tunnel directly connected to UNRWA’s own electrical grid. Documented cases show UNRWA aid bags found in the hideout of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar — the mastermind of the October 7th massacre — used to conceal weapons. Hamas routinely diverts fuel and supplies, and levies taxes on aid moving through Gaza,  all under UNRWA’s operational presence.

The mechanism of indirect subsidy is straightforward: every dollar UNRWA spends on governance and social services in Gaza is a dollar Hamas does not need to spend. With an estimated 10–12% of staff alleged to have terror ties, donor contributions — including from the United States and European Union — are effectively helping to free up Hamas resources for terrorism.

Meanwhile, UNRWA’s counterterrorism vetting procedures remain strikingly weak. The Section 301(c) certifications required for U.S.-funded aid fall far below the standards applied to virtually any other American-funded relief program, a gap that critics have flagged for decades.

The Bottom Line

UNRWA is not a neutral humanitarian organization that has been compromised at the margins. It is an institution whose leadership has acknowledged terrorist infiltration and tolerated it, whose schools have spread extremist ideology, whose facilities have housed weapons, and whose funding model subsidizes the very terrorist organization that carried out the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.

Far from being a neutral agency, UNRWA is one of the largest state-adjacent sponsors of terrorism operating in the region today.

Sources

Washington Institute, UNRWA, Washington Free Beacon, New York Post, Washington Institute, X, UN Watch, UN Watch, Fox News, UN Watch, Congress