A StandWithUs UK Special Deep Dive Series
According to its first article in its Charter, the first purpose of the United Nations (UN) is:
Our first Deep Dive about UNIFIL found the following:
- UNIFIL’s Purpose vs. Reality: Originally established to restore peace and security along the Israel-Lebanon border, the UNIFIL peacekeeping force has been accused of failing to enforce key responsibilities, allowing Hezbollah’s military presence to grow.
- Hezbollah’s Presence near UNIFIL: Hezbollah has built extensive military infrastructure and tunnel systems close to Israel’s border, often within reach of UNIFIL positions, suggesting either an inability or unwillingness by UNIFIL to monitor these activities.
- UNIFIL’s Limited Access: Hezbollah frequently restricts UNIFIL’s access to certain areas, obstructing inspections and monitoring efforts, which compromises UNIFIL’s ability to fulfill its mandate.
- Allegations of Complicity: Testimonies from captured Hezbollah militants allege that Hezbollah has bribed UNIFIL personnel and exploited UNIFIL security resources for terror activities against Israel.
- Doubt Over UNIFIL’s Role: With evidence of Hezbollah’s unchecked activity, questions arise over whether UNIFIL’s failures stem from complicity with terror groups or gross incompetence in upholding peace and security along the border.
Our education team have worked extensively on presenting this special four-part Deep Dive about the UN, and the questions that arise about whether this supposedly impartial organisation is complicit with the actions of terror groups or simply incompetent at upholding its own basic values. This piece explores the accusations surrounding the United Nations Relief & Works Agency (UNRWA), the organisation specifically created to support all Palestinians across the Middle East.
UNRWA
The United Nations Relief & Works Agency (UNRWA) was founded by the UN in 1949 in the aftermath of the 1948 war. It is exclusively a service for Palestinians and allows them to keep their refugee status through generations. This is something that does not apply to any other refugees in the world.
UNRWA is a core part of Palestinian society, both in the West Bank and particularly in the Gaza Strip. Amongst several services, it provides aid to Palestinians and runs schools across the West Bank and Gaza. UNRWA Headquarters are located in Amman and in Gaza. The Agency maintains a field office in each of its areas of operations – Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.
UNRWA’s Funding
UNRWA has an approximate budget of $1.6 Billion per year, much of it funded by governments across the world using taxpayers’ money, with its top donors including the USA, Germany and Japan.
The United Kingdom has been a long supporter of UNRWA, with taxpayers’ (that’s you!) money being used to fund its activities and staffing. The UK government has committed to approximately £21 million per year of donations to UNRWA. Despite a brief suspension of this aid following accusations against staff for taking part in the October 7th massacres, the Labour government resumed the aid almost immediately after taking power in July 2024.
There have been many accusations over the complicity of UNRWA in terror activity, its staff being members of terror organisations, and the spread of antisemitism in its schools.
UNRWA Schools
UNRWA operates 706 schools, employs almost 20,000 educational staff, and has over 500,000 students a year. Almost all Palestinian children will graduate through an UNRWA school, and many Palestinians will have worked as their staff. Much has been uncovered regarding the materials used by UNRWA schools, which has been found to be filled with antisemitic rhetoric and glorification of terror.
(Examples below all provided by IMPACT-se)
Maths taught by counting martyrs and suicide bombers
A fourth-grade maths exercise asks students to calculate the number of martyrs (including those who have led suicide bombings on buses and shopping centres) in Palestinian uprisings accompanied by a photograph of raised coffins at a mass funeral.
Newton’s Second Law taught through Palestinian aiming slingshot at soldiers:
Newton’s Second Law is exemplified by an image of a masked Palestinian boy aiming a slingshot at approaching soldiers. Students are asked “what are the forces that influence the object after its release from the slingshot and the spring?”
Erasure of Israel:
The borders of modern Palestine are illustrated in a map (titled: “Map of Palestine”), and children are required to define these “current” borders. The text explaining that Palestine extends “from the Mediterranean Sea in the west; to the Jordan River in the East; and from Lebanon and Syria in the north; to the Gulf of Aqaba and Egypt in the south: an area of approximately 27,000.”
UNRWA Staff
There has been much evidence of radicalisation and terror links of UNRWA staff, which has been denied and dismissed by the UN and its donors. However, the Israeli government made it public that there was clear footage of UNRWA staff participating in the massacres of October 7th.
In January 2024, Israel provided new intelligence collected since October 7th that showed that over 10% of the 510 employees in UNRWA’s education system in the Gaza Strip who hold senior positions (school principals and their deputies, directors and deputy directors of training centres) are members of Hamas or the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, both of which are designated terror organisations, some of whom had participated in the October 7th massacre. This prompted several of the countries that support UNRWA (including the UK) to suspend their funding of the organisation.
Screenshot from a video showing an UNRWA worker driving a white UN jeep, and abducting the body of Jonathan Samerano, who was killed by Hamas terrorists on October 7.
In August 2024, the United Nations announced that nine employees of the UNRWA agency for Palestinian refugees “may have been involved” in Hamas’s October 7th attack on Israel and were to be fired from the organisation.
In September 2024, the IDF eliminated Fathi al-Sharif, stating that he was a leader of Hamas in Lebanon. Al-Sharif was the director of an UNRWA secondary school and head of the UNRWA Teachers Union in Lebanon. Following his elimination Hamas publicly acknowledged that Fathi al-Sharif was a Hamas leader. In fact, official Hamas channels such as Al-Aqsa TV and Hamas’ telegram described him as the leader of Hamas in Lebanon.
Photo from October 2019 of Fateh Al-Sharif receiving a “Certificate of Appreciation” for his work at UNRWA (June 23rd 2024, posted on X by UN Watch)
In October 2024, the IDF announced that it had eliminated the terrorist Mohammad Abu Itiwi, a Nukhba commander in the Al Bureij Battalion of Hamas’ Central Camps Brigade. Mohammad Abu Itiwi had also been employed by UNRWA since July 2022. On October 7th, Mohammad Abu Itiwi was involved in the murder and abduction of Israeli civilians. Abu Itiwi led the murderous attack on the bomb shelter on Route 232 in the area of Re’im in southern Israel. UNRWA was notified of Abu Itiwi’s terror links four months prior to his elimination as part of a list of over 100 other suspects, but the information was ignored.
(L) image of Abu Itiwi during the October 7th massacre, and (R) a screenshot of his name on UNRWA staffing books.
UNRWA Facilities Used as Terror Bases
Since October 7th,the evidence of UNRWA facilities having been used as Hamas bases has been overwhelming.
According to Israeli intelligence, over thirty UNRWA facilities in Gaza have been found to contain terror infrastructures such as tunnel shafts, reflecting a deeply concerning, and possibly systematic, abuse of the status of these facilities for terrorist purposes. Hamas operated a high-end server farm directly under UNRWA’s Gaza headquarters, with communication and electricity cables connecting both compounds.
Intelligence shows that Hamas considers UNRWA an essential asset both for maintaining its rule over Gaza and for exploiting its facilities to build terror infrastructure.
In May 2024, Israel conducted a precise strike on a Hamas war room and weapons depot hidden inside of an UNRWA school located in Nuseirat in Gaza. Israeli intelligence believed that Hamas had recently used the war room to organise attacks against Israeli troops operating in central Gaza. Ten of the 15 terrorists eliminated in the strike were members of Hamas’s elite Nukhba Force who likely participated in Hamas’s October 7 massacre in southern Israel, according to the IDF.
A subterranean Hamas data centre underneath UNRWA’sheadquarters in Gaza City, February 8, 2024. (Emanuel Fabian/Times of Israel)
Cables running from a UNRWA server room to a Hamas data centre underground in Gaza City, February 8, 2024. (Emanuel Fabian/Times of Israel)
A soldier stands in a Hamas tunnel underneath a UNRWA school in Gaza City, February 8, 2024. (Emanuel Fabian/Times of Israel)
You decide: complicity or incompetence?
The evidence surrounding the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) raises pressing questions about its true role in the conflict. With numerous cases showing UNRWA facilities allegedly used by militants and reports of agency staff tied to designated terror groups, the organisation appears either complicit in supporting terror or shockingly negligent in its oversight. Funded by international taxpayer’s money, UNRWA’s activities may have evolved from humanitarian support into unintentional—or intentional—fuel for conflict. This demands rigorous scrutiny and accountability from both the UN and donor nations, as UNRWA’s actions may now undermine peace rather than support it.
