The U.S. Agency for International Development Inspector General—an independent law enforcement office—is set to expand its probe of UNRWA to encompass at least 1,500 individuals with suspected terror ties, the Washington Free Beacon reported exclusively. The investigation has already produced named, documented cases and is generating serious momentum in Congress and the Trump administration for the harshest sanctions yet against the UN agency—up to and including a full foreign terrorist organization designation.
On the morning of October 7, 2023, a white UN jeep drove into Kibbutz Be’eri. The driver was Faisal Ali Mussalem al-Naami, a social worker employed by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. Al-Naami arrived at the scene with another armed operative, placed the body of 21-year-old Yonatan Samerano—who had been shot fleeing the Nova music festival—in the trunk of the UN-marked vehicle, and transported it into Gaza. It took 625 days and an IDF military operation to recover his body. Yonatan’s mother, Ayelet, spent those months confronting senior UN officials, including UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini, demanding to know where her son was. She received no response.
Al-Naami’s case is now one data point in a federal investigation that is about to reach a scale impossible to ignore.
The lead documented case is Hafez Mousa Mohammed Mousa, an UNRWA school principal found to be an operative of Hamas’s East Jabaliya Battalion who coordinated communications with other suspected Hamas members during the October 7 attacks while serving in his UN post.
On the morning of the massacre, Mousa used the same cellphone to perform his duties both as a Hamas operative and as an UNRWA school principal. He received a 10-year government-wide debarment from U.S. federal funds—the first known U.S. debarment of an individual affiliated with a terrorist organization connected to a UN humanitarian agency.
The cases fit a pattern that Israel has been documenting for years. Hamas’s own internal records, seized during the war, identify 24 UNRWA school employees as operatives, half of whom were issued rifles and grenades. One principal was known to wear Hamas military fatigues after school. Israeli intelligence estimated that 10% of UNRWA’s Gaza workforce—roughly 1,200 employees—are Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad operatives, and that at least 500 hold military positions within those organizations, including senior command roles. Terror infrastructure was found in at least 30 UNRWA facilities.
The physical evidence is just as stark. Israeli forces uncovered a Hamas data center directly beneath UNRWA’s Gaza headquarters, containing computer servers and industrial batteries supporting Hamas’s intelligence and communications infrastructure, with electrical cables running directly into UNRWA’s own power grid.
UNRWA chief Lazzarini claimed he had no knowledge of what was beneath his own headquarters. The commander of Israel’s 401st Armored Brigade, Col. Benny Aharon, responded: “There is no doubt that UNRWA staff knew that Hamas was digging a massive tunnel beneath them.”
The UN’s own internal investigation has done little to address the scale of the problem. The Office of Internal Oversight Services investigated 19 UNRWA staff members and fired nine, stating only that the evidence “indicated that the UNRWA staff members may have been involved in the armed attacks.” In nine other cases, the evidence was deemed insufficient. Israeli Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan called it “a disgrace,” noting that Israel had provided the UN with detailed information on over 100 Hamas-member UNRWA employees, and the UN investigated 19.
Now the obstruction itself has become part of the case. The USAID Inspector General sent letters in December 2025 to six UN agencies and the International Committee of the Red Cross requesting personnel information and details of their interactions with Hamas. None of the UN agencies complied.
“Given its history with Hamas, UNRWA does not have the luxury of not cooperating with an investigation and thinking there might not be consequences,” a senior U.S. official told the Free Beacon. “We will respond accordingly.”
Congressional pressure is mounting. Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) and 24 colleagues wrote to the Trump administration in May demanding it “take decisive action to fully dismantle UNRWA and eliminate it from the UN budget.” Rep. Mike Lawler (R., N.Y.) and 90 other lawmakers issued the same call days later. “UNRWA’s terrorist ties are clear,” Cotton told the Free Beacon, “and the UN’s attempt to hide those ties from the U.S. government is deeply concerning.”
Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) warned: “Either they come clean, or I expect growing momentum for designating them for the support they give to terrorists.” Sen. Bill Hagerty (R., Tenn.) called it “appalling that other U.N. agencies today are still stonewalling the Trump Administration’s ongoing investigations.
”The punitive options now under active discussion include stripping UNRWA of its diplomatic immunity under U.S. law—which would expose it to a torrent of October 7-related lawsuits—and a full foreign terrorist organization designation. The family of Yonatan Samerano has already filed a landmark lawsuit in the Jerusalem District Court against UNRWA seeking NIS 25 million in damages under Israel’s Compensation for Victims of Terrorism Law. If diplomatic immunity falls, that case would be the first of many.
Richard Goldberg of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies framed the legal reality bluntly: “The Justice Department’s position right now is that UNRWA does not enjoy privilege or immunity. That means nothing stops the Treasury Department from imposing terrorism sanctions on UNRWA to force its closure.”
A senior State Department official put the investigative conclusion more plainly still: “If it walks like an FTO and talks like an FTO and employs FTO personnel, a case exists that it should be an FTO.”
Israel has been making that case for decades. The U.S. government is now making it too—with names, dates, and a federal docket that is still growing.
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