The federal investigation into staff at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency—the U.N. Gaza relief organization that’s been closely linked to Hamas—will soon encompass at least 1,500 UNRWA-linked individuals suspected of terror ties.
This unprecedented dragnet—reported here for the first time by the Washington Free Beacon—exposes an aid group brimming with Hamas operatives and is generating momentum in Congress and the Trump administration for harsher sanctions on the embattled aid group, according to congressional staffers briefed on the matter.
The punitive measures up for consideration include stripping UNRWA of its diplomatic immunity under U.S. law, which would open it up to legal action from terror victims, and fully designating the aid organization as a foreign terrorist organization, according to three Trump administration officials and other sources tracking the matter in Congress.
These discussions have accelerated since the Free Beaconfirst reported in April that UNRWA and other U.N. agencies are stonewalling a federal probe into their ties to Hamas.
The U.S. Agency for International Development inspector general’s office, a law enforcement agency separate from the largely defunct USAID, has spent months independently unearthing evidence that multiple UNRWA employees participated in Hamas’s Oct. 7 terror attack.
The probe will soon expand to at least 1,500 suspected militants with UNRWA ties.
UNRWA, an official organ of the notoriously anti-Israel United Nations, is the only aid group with a large operation in Gaza, with as many as 13,000 Gazan employees and a large distribution network.
U.N. officials have insisted for years that it is the only viable option for getting relief to Gazans.
But Israel and its supporters have long claimed that UNRWA is fully infiltrated by Hamas and has cemented the terror group’s control over aid distribution.
The USAID inspector general is currently working with the State Department in the latter’s effort to build a blacklist that will ensure terror-linked UNRWA employees cannot circulate to other aid organizations within the U.N. system.
The inspector general has already confirmed that one UNRWA school principal participated in the Oct. 7 attacks as a member of Hamas’s East Jabaliya Battalion and has flagged multiple others for the State Department.
“The USAID inspector general’s cases, coming in droves, are corroborating the obvious parent-subsidiary relationship between UNRWA and Hamas in Gaza,” a senior State Department official familiar with the investigation told the Free Beacon.
“If UNRWA was not a U.N. organization, it would be undeniably facing terrorist sanctions based on what USAID IG has uncovered.”
That ongoing USAID inspector general investigation, the source said, would logically lead to labeling UNRWA as a foreign terrorist group.
A second U.S. official said the Trump administration must consider a “whole-of-world approach” to UNRWA that includes further executive action and policies that would strip the aid group’s diplomatic immunity.
If UNRWA could be sued in the American courts, the agency could very well collapse under the strain of defending itself from a torrent of Oct. 7-related complaints.
“There has to be consequences for UNRWA—for its conduct in the run-up to and role in October 7, and continuing all the way to today with its ongoing refusal to adhere to legitimate and pressing American inquiries.”
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