Controversies about UNRWA

Since the 1949 founding of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, abbreviated as UNRWA, there have been many controversies with the organization. 

These include the use of its facilities to hide weapons and hold civilian hostages, UNRWA staff who belong to militant groups like Hamas, antisemitic school materials that incite violence, and evidence that UNRWA staff very likely took part in the 7 October 2023 attack on Israel.

## Hidden weapons and tunnels
Multiple times, weapons and tunnels have been found hidden within and underneath UNRWA buildings:

* In 2014, UNRWA found rockets hidden in one of its schools in Gaza.
* In 2015, a UN inquiry found that Palestinian militant groups used three UNRWA schools for hiding weapons. The inquiry also said that rockets were "probably" fired at Israel from these UNRWA buildings.
* In 2017, UNRWA found a tunnel under the Maghazi Prep B Boys School, an elementary school for boys in Gaza. UNRWA removed the items, and told authorities in Israel and Gaza. The organization claimed that it did not have enough money to guard all its schools, but that it did inspections of its premises to be sure they were only being used for humanitarian purposes.
* In 2024, after the Hamas-led October 7 massacre within Israeli territory in 2023, Israeli troops found firearms in the basement of an UNRWA school complex. The school complex also included a mosque and a civilian medical clinic.
* The findings of a 2024 investigation by an Israeli non-profit organization called the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se) found that Hamas tunnels run beneath two UNRWA schools: Al-Maghazi Boys Preparatory School B and Al-Zaytun A.

## UNRWA employees that are part of militant groups 
In 2024, during the war between Israel and Gaza, it was found that 24 people who worked for UNRWA were a part of Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad. All of these people worked in education. Most of them were principals, and some were teachers or school counselors. After this report, the head of UNRWA, Philippe Lazzarini, said that these materials had been published by accident. The Parliament stated that it opposed content that was "encouraging violence, spreading antisemitism and inciting hatred in Palestinian school textbooks, drafted by [European] Union-funded civil servants as well as in supplementary educational materials developed by UNRWA staff and taught in its schools." The Israeli government also said that 100 more UNRWA employees were also members of Hamas. The United Nations investigated these claims, and found enough evidence that nine UNRWA staff had participated in the October 7 massacre. Those employees were fired.

An elderly Israeli civilian named Ditza Heiman, who was 84 years old when she was abducted during the October 7 massacre, reported during a court testimony that the man who kept her captive was a teacher in an UNRWA school, and that he held her hostage in his home.

Because of this possible connection between UNRWA staff and the October 7 massacre, the governments of several countries temporarily stopped funding UNRWA. The Israeli government released video footage showing al-Naami loading the Israeli man's limp body into an SUV at Kibbutz Beeri. The SUV was a UN vehicle.

### Fatah Sharif Abu el-Amin 
Fatah Sharif was a top Hamas commander who was also an employee of UNRWA and the head of the UNRWA teachers' union in Lebanon. UNRWA came under pressure once it became known that he was a top Hamas commander. UNRWA was criticized for not doing enough to remove Hamas militants from its ranks.

In March 2024, UNRWA learned that Sharif was part of Hamas, and suspended him. When Sharif was suspended, his fellow teachers went on strike and demanded that he be allowed to return to his job. Sharif was killed in an Israeli airstrike during the Israel-Hamas war that followed the October 7 massacre.

### Muhammad Abu Attawi 
Muhammad Abu Attawi was a commander in Hamas who worked for UNRWA as a driver.

According to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Attawi murdered and abducted Israelis during the October 7 massacre. In October 2024, both UNRWA and the IDF confirmed that he was killed.

The IDF and the Shin Bet said that Attawi had been employed by UNRWA since July 2022. UNRWA confirmed that Attawi was one of their employees. More than 100 victims joined the lawsuit. They include a former hostage, survivors of the October 7 massacre, and the estates of some of the people who were killed in the attack. The plaintiffs claimed that for more than 10 years, UNRWA had helped Hamas create what it needed to carry out the attack. The lawsuit states that UNRWA did this in multiple ways, including weapons storage and letting Hamas use schools to position rocket launchers. They said that UNRWA was guilty of "aiding and abetting Hamas' genocide, crimes against humanity, and torture," and that doing this went against international law and also the United States'  Torture Victim Protection Act. The lawsuit also claimed that seven top UNRWA officials had known that Hamas took about $1 billion from UNRWA in order to pay for the weapons and equipment used in the October 7 massacre: Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner-general of UNRWA; Pierre Krähenbühl, the former head of UNRWA; Leni Stenseth, Sandra Mitchell, and Margot Ellis, who were once deputy commissioners-generals of UNRWA; Greta Gunnarsdottir, the director of the UNRWA New York office; and Filippo Grandi, the U.N. high commissioner for refugees. Hamas held her in UNRWA facilities but would not give her medical treatment. As a result, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer's office said it would consider whether the UK would continue giving $16 million to UNRWA each year.

## Report claiming ethical abuses by UNRWA leadership 
In 2019, a confidential report written by UNRWA's ethics agency claimed a number of ethical violations by UNRWA's leadership, including "sexual misconduct, nepotism, retaliation, discrimination or other abuses of authority, for personal gain, to suppress legitimate dissent, and to otherwise achieve their personal objectives." The report said that an "inner circle" of top UNRWA staff was guilty of these abuses: Commissioner-General Pierre Krähenbühl (Commissioner-General), Sandra Mitchell (Deputy Commissioner-General), Hakam Shahwan (Chief of Staff), and Maria Mohammedi (Senior Adviser to the Commissioner-General). The report said this was "an enormous risk to the reputation of the UN." 

In November 2019, Krähenbühl resigned from his role. UNRWA's Deputy Commissioner-General, Senior Advisor to the Commissioner-General, and Chief of Staff also left the agency.

Because of the report's claims, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Belgium stopped making donations to UNRWA for a period of time.

## Related pages
* Antisemitism
* Disinformation
* Palestinian political violence

## References