U.S. Considers Sanctions on UNRWA Over Terrorist Ties: Report
Trump administration weighs terrorism-related sanctions against UN refugee agency with documented Hamas connections after past findings show 12% of its Gaza staff are terror operatives
The Trump administration is considering imposing sanctions on the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), according to two sources with direct knowledge of the deliberations who spoke with Reuters. The discussions follow mounting evidence that the agency has been systematically compromised by Hamas and other U.S.-designated terrorist organizations through widespread employment of their operatives.
Sanctions Under Active Consideration
Sanctions on UNRWA would financially isolate the UN body and disrupt its operations across Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria. No final decisions have been made, and possibilities range from sanctioning the entire agency to targeting specific officials or divisions.
A State Department official characterized UNRWA as “a corrupt organization with a proven track record of aiding and abetting terrorists,” adding that “everything is on the table.”
Massive Terror Presence in UNRWA Exposed
The sanctions discussions come on the heels of a comprehensive Israeli intelligence report released in April 2025 that identified at least 1,462 UNRWA employees in Gaza—12% of the agency’s local workforce—as active members of Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
The report documented how Hamas weaponized UNRWA’s infrastructure, using schools, medical facilities, and administrative centers to plan and support terrorist operations, including the October 7, 2023, massacre that killed over 1,200 Israelis and triggered the current war.
Israeli authorities verified that 80 of UNRWA’s 546 school principals and deputy principals in Gaza held terrorist affiliations, with some directly participating in the October 7 atrocities. Intelligence showed Hamas operated a military intelligence server farm beneath UNRWA’s Gaza City headquarters, drawing electricity from the agency’s systems. Tunnel shafts and weapons caches were discovered beneath multiple UNRWA schools.
At least 18 UNRWA employees actively participated in the October 7 attack, according to captured enemy materials, geolocation data, communications intercepts, and CCTV footage analyzed in the Israeli report. The evidence included school principals who commanded Hamas military units, medical workers who coordinated operations, and drivers who participated in kidnappings.
In April 2025, Israeli Ambassador Amir Weissbrod, Deputy Director General for UN and International Organizations at Israel’s Foreign Ministry, launched a public campaign naming specific UNRWA employees with verified terrorist ties. His disclosures, based on captured records and employment documents, revealed teachers, administrators, and counselors who maintained simultaneous roles in Hamas’s military apparatus.
Pattern of Radicalization and Institutional Failure
The terror presence extends beyond individual cases to systemic radicalization. A January 2024 investigation by UN Watch exposed a 3,000-member Telegram group of UNRWA teachers in Gaza who celebrated the October 7 massacre while discussing their salaries. The report identified dozens of educators—some by name and contract number—who called for executing Israelis, encouraged using human shields, and shared materials glorifying terrorism with students. Screenshots tied the group directly to UNRWA’s internal systems.
UN Watch has flagged over 150 UNRWA staff members since 2015 for inciting violence or promoting antisemitism. An interactive map compiled by the watchdog organization documents more than 400 UNRWA employees with verified terrorist connections, revealing a revolving door between the agency and militant groups.
Top Hamas leaders have held influential positions in UNRWA schools, and many current staff openly glorify jihad on social media. Claudio Cordone, UNRWA’s former Lebanon director who also headed Amnesty International, met regularly with terrorist organization leaders and publicly praised Hamas’s Lebanon education chief Fateh Sharif for “guaranteeing a better future for Palestine refugee children.”
Hamas described Sharif as someone who “fought as a martyr and gave Jihadi education to the children.” Cordone was recently appointed by the UN as Deputy Special Envoy for Syria.
The potential sanctions represent an unprecedented challenge to UN credibility. With Israeli intelligence, diplomatic disclosures, and independent investigations all documenting systemic terrorist presence within UNRWA, the question facing Western governments is no longer whether the agency has a terror problem—but whether they are prepared to act on the mounting evidence of institutional complicity.
UNRWA is one of the reasons that Palestinian statehood had not been settled. Also complicit for decades in Arab League states (an ocean of them) not absorbing the most assimilable refugees in history: SAME language, religions, ethnicities. WOW! What other refugees have EVER had the same traits as potential host nations? Answer: NONE. While Palestinians get their very own agency, ALL other world refugees must share only one.
Not to forget that after Jordan was made of 78%(!) of former Ottoman Palestine in 1925, an Arab Palestinian state came into existence, yet the other 22% was still to be shared between them and the newly reviving Jewish nation. The Arab League all refused the UN two-state proposal, agreed to by Israel. They then invaded Israel on multiple fronts, causing the war that caused the Arab refugees in the first place, and then refused to absorb their ‘brothers.’ All while one TINY Israel absorbed hundreds of thousands of Shoah refugees and Mizrachi forced exiles from the most ancient diaspora communities in Arabic and North African lands. 68% of Arab refugees told the UN they’d never seen an Israeli soldier and evacuated due to nearby battles or due to Arab League reps urging them to leave with the promise they’d return to a Judenrein land. Some of those who did report seeing Israeli soldiers said these were passing through and did not force their evacuation. UNRWA is complicit in maintaining Palestinian Arabs as intergenerational political hostages to the destruction of Israel. Like any institution, it wants to perpetuate itself for the billions of dollars, often spent to support terrorist goals, and tens of thousands of jobs. UNRWA is every bit as much an enemy of the Palestinian people as it is of Israel.
shalom / salaam