JERUSALEM – UNRWA, the United Nations agency tasked with assisting Palestinian refugees, has come under increasing pressure in recent weeks for failing to condemn militant terrorist groups in the Gaza Strip for openly using its internationally funded facilities – including clinics, schools and headquarters – to wage a brutal war against Israel.
This week, Israeli lawmakers approved the first reading of a bill to sever ties with the controversial UN agency and declare it a terrorist organization. Speaking in the Knesset last week, the bill’s sponsor, Yulia Malinowski, called UNRWA a “fifth column inside Israel” and said the time has come to outlaw the agency in the country.
Meanwhile, the House Foreign Affairs Committee also passed the first bill earlier this month to direct the State Department to withdraw funds previously donated to the multimillion-dollar organization, citing a freeze on existing funding.
“The U.S. has enough evidence at this point to impose terrorism sanctions on UNRWA,” Richard Goldberg, senior adviser to the Washington, D.C., think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Fox News Digital.
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A photo released by the Israel Defense Forces showed three alleged Hamas fighters inside the UNRWA compound in Rafah. (Israel Defense Forces)
Goldberg, a former Trump National Security Council staffer, said the controversial organization “must be barred from any future role in Gaza,” noting that “UNRWA’s presence, which incites violence and hatred against Jews and Israel, is inherently antithetical to the goals of deradicalizing Palestinian society and empowering Palestinians.”
“If we continue to leave future developments in Gaza to UNRWA, we are dooming both Palestinians and Israelis to a future of violence and insecurity,” he said.
The backlash against UNRWA – which, according to its website, carries out vital life-saving work for some 5.9 million Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon – came after Israel presented evidence that UNRWA staff were actively involved in a Hamas-led terrorist attack in southern Israel on October 7. The raid killed more than 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and led to the return of an additional 240 hostages to Gaza, including a 9-month-old baby.
UNRWA headquarters in Gaza. A woman is abducted by Hamas terrorists after they attack an Israeli kibbutz on October 7. (Getty, Israel Defense Forces, Associated Press | Ahmed Zakot/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images | Hamas Telegram)
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told Fox News Digital in February that the shocking attack involved “dozens” of UNRWA personnel, some of whom were teachers and medical staff employed by UNRWA who had been held hostage following the release of more than 100 hostages, mostly women and children, in a ceasefire agreement last November.
Israel has long accused UNRWA of perpetuating the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The agency points out that Palestinian refugees are the only group allowed their own aid agency, and that refugees from nearly all other global conflicts, past and present, are protected under the broader umbrella of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. It further points out that UNRWA, which was established in 1949 to serve hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced at the founding of Israel, continues to recognise the descendants of refugees, regardless of their place of birth or current situation, rather than seeking to resettle them like other refugee agencies.
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UNRWA Executive Director Philippe Lazzarini (Getty Images)
according to UNRWA websiteThe 2023 budget has been pledged at $1.46 billion, with the United States, Germany, the EU and France being the largest donors, but the United States decided to suspend funding along with 17 other countries after Israel presented evidence that its personnel took part in the October 7 attack.
In March, Consolidated Appropriations ActIn March 2024, despite most other countries deciding to resume support, Parliament moved to extend the funding freeze until March 2025. Last week, under the new Labour government, the UK announced it would soon “release £21 million”. [$21.2 m] to support [UNRWA’s] Lifesaving efforts in Gaza.”
Israel Defense Forces soldiers perform an operation in the city of Rafah in the Gaza Strip. (Israel Defense Forces Spokesperson’s Office)
The funding was resumed despite the UN Office of Internal Oversight (OIOS) continuing to investigate Israeli allegations against UNRWA staff, according to an April announcement, and despite the Israeli military reporting near-daily battles with armed terrorist groups both inside and outside Palestine. UNRWA-owned complexThis includes buildings where Gaza civilians are taking refuge.
Moreover, while UNRWA Administrator Philippe Lazzarini was quick to condemn the fighting inside his organization’s facilities and the estimated 38,000 civilian deaths reported by the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health, he stopped short of accusing Hamas or other terrorist groups of deliberately drawing the fighting to his organization’s heartlands.
On May 9, Palestinian refugees fled the southern city of Rafah and arrived in central Gaza. (AP/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Juliette Touma, UNRWA’s director of public affairs, told Fox News Digital that the organization “condemned all parties to the conflict, including Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups, for the misuse of UNRWA facilities.”
“We have made those comments repeatedly in public statements, speeches, remarks and media interviews, including at the inspector general level,” she said.
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“We also remind all parties to the conflict that UN facilities must never be used for military or combat purposes,” Tooma said, adding that UNRWA “called for an investigation and an independent investigation into any violations of international humanitarian law.”
But the accusation appears not to have been strong enough.
A bill that passed first reading in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament., The bill, introduced on Monday and supported by lawmakers across the political spectrum, would ban UNRWA from operating on Israeli soil and strip UNRWA staff of the diplomatic immunity afforded to other UN employees.
A United Nations vehicle enters the UNRWA offices in Jerusalem on April 2, 2024. (Yoav Dudkiewicz/TPS)
UNRWA has also faced stiff criticism in Congress, with some members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee adamant about maintaining the funding ban and now even seeking to revoke U.S. funds previously sent to the agency.
On July 12, the committee voted for a bipartisan bill introduced by Reps. Brian Mast (R-FL) and Josh Gottheimer (DN) that would direct the Secretary of State to withdraw federal funds already allocated to UNRWA. With the bill passing 24-22 in committee, Rep. Mast posted a lengthy video on X calling out those who voted against it as “willfully ignoring anything that doesn’t fit their narrative that Palestinians are victims of this war, which is what they want to claim.” [recognizing that] They started this war, they started the genocide, and now this war is happening.”
He criticized Democrats who claim that “UNRWA was doing God’s work” and said people educated in schools run by the agency were “indoctrinated with hatred for Jews.”
“For too long, UNRWA has masqueraded as a relief organization while in fact serving as a breeding ground for Palestinian terrorists,” he said, adding, “Intelligence reports show that as many as 10 percent of UNRWA staff have direct ties to Hamas and Palestinian jihadists. It is absurd that our hard-earned American tax dollars should be used for such a pointless activity. The State Department should do everything in its power to recover this funding.”
Anne Bayefsky, director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust and executive director of Human Rights Voice, told Fox News Digital that it makes sense for Americans to reject U.S. funding for UNRWA because “UNRWA is an organization that incites hatred of Jews and violence born of gross intolerance.”
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“This is not speculation, it is an undeniable fact,” she said, noting that “UNRWA staff participated in the October 7 atrocities, a significant number of UNRWA staff are members of Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist organizations, and UNRWA facilities have been used as command and control centers and weapons storage facilities for Hamas.”
“It’s no surprise that Americans refuse to fund UNRWA because it’s the right thing to do,” she said. “Terrorism, rape and anti-Semitism can’t be run with our money!”
