Hamas leaders have controlled the United Nations Relief and Works Agency’s (UNRWA) on-the-ground operations since at least 2011, enabling the terror group to put its members in teaching and administrative positions to spread Hamas’s jihadist ideology using U.S. tax dollars, according to a new watchdog group report.
“By knowingly employing Hamas terrorist leaders as school principals and teachers, and by allowing terror chiefs to head the unions that oversee thousands of their teachers, UNRWA didn’t just tolerate extremism—the Western-funded U.N. agency institutionalized it, turning classrooms into incubators of hate,” an investigation from U.N. Watch, which monitors the international organization, found.
The 220-page report documents how Hamas leaders in Gaza systematically took control of UNRWA’s day-to-day operations and bred “thousands of jihadi terrorists,” often ensuring that the agency’s leadership in New York City had little to no decision making power. Only around 120 UNRWA employees work at the U.N.’s headquarters, in stark contrast to the nearly 30,000 who work inside Gaza under the authority of the agency’s Hamas-dominated staff union.
“The Palestinian Arab local staff are the people who run all of UNRWA’s services, including its education system,” according to U.N. Watch, which found that UNRWA appointed at least 22 Hamas members to significant positions over the past 13 years. UNRWA’s current and past union heads, the agency’s teachers’ union chief, and multiple school principals and teachers operating across Gaza and Lebanon have all held other jobs as terrorists.
“Many of these local leaders, especially in Gaza and Lebanon, are Hamas members or leaders, while thousands of UNRWA’s local employees are also active Hamas members,” U.N. Watch found. “To put this in perspective, more than 99% of UNRWA’s 30,000 employees are area staff—local Palestinian Arabs—while only 120 employees at the agency are international staff, funded by the United Nations in New York.”
This arrangement allowed Hamas leaders to control the agency’s educational programs and monitor the activities of Western officials inside Gaza. It also enabled the terror group to use UNRWA facilities as military outposts and introduce civilian infrastructure into the battlefield.
One such Hamas leader, Suhail Al-Hindi, played a central role in reshaping UNRWA’s operations to bring them in lockstep with the terror group’s aims. From 2006 to 2017, Al-Hindi was “a Hamas leader and an UNRWA school principal and head of the UNRWA Gaza Staff Union, overseeing 8,000 teachers and 220,000 students in 240 schools,” the U.N. Watch report states. His power within the aid agency ensured that Hamas was able to teach its brand of jihadi terrorism to the thousands of students educated inside UNRWA schools.
Al-Hindi resigned from UNRWA in 2017 after his election to Hamas’s politburo received international attention. Just a few months later, according to U.N. Watch, “Al-Hindi was already appearing at Hamas rallies alongside Hamas Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar.”
Al-Hindi also led Hamas’s “March of Return” committee. That body oversaw a protest movement with the intention of “test[ing] and study[ing] Israeli defenses in preparation for the Hamas invasion which eventually took place on October 7th.” By the spring of 2024, he had “emerged as a top Hamas spokesperson with regard to the ceasefire and hostage negotiations.”
UNRWA leaders were aware of Al-Hindi’s relationship with Hamas both before and after his resignation, U.N. Watch explains. In fact, UNRWA suspended him in 2011 after he appeared on stage with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.
Al-Hindi responded to his suspension by orchestrating a wave of popular protests that shut down UNRWA schools and other humanitarian services. He returned to work within three months with a promise that UNRWA would not discipline any staffers who joined his strike.
A May 2021 episode detailed in the U.N. Watch report demonstrates the extent of Hamas’s power over UNRWA. The agency’s Western-appointed Gaza director, Matthias Schmale, publicly praised Israel for conducting “very precise” strikes on Hamas and avoiding civilian casualties. Al-Hindi described Schmale’s comments as “a great sin” the U.N. staffer “must atone for.” Amir Al-Mishal, who replaced Al-Hindi atop the UNRWA Gaza staff union, led a protest movement against Schmale, and Hamas expelled the U.N. worker from Gaza less than ten days later.
Together, according to U.N. Watch, “Al-Hindi and Al-Mishal were able to force out a senior member of UNRWA’s international staff.”
Al-Mishal served concurrently as an official with Hamas’s Al-Intaj Bank—sanctioned last year for raising about $10 million for the terror group—and used his position with UNRWA to “siphon money” to Hamas, U.N. Watch notes.
The nephew of the current UNRWA Gaza union head, Mustafa Al-Ghoul, participated in the Oct. 7 attacks, and Al-Ghoul himself has praised Hamas terrorism during his time as leader of the union.
Hamas employed the same playbook in Lebanon, where a man named Fateh Sharif served as “UNRWA school principal and Head of the UNRWA Lebanon Teachers’ Union.” In that role, he “oversaw 39,000 students and 2,000 teachers in 64 schools—as well as his UNRWA associates in Lebanon.”
An Israeli airstrike killed Sharif in September 2024, and Hamas “eulogized him as their leader in Lebanon” after his death, according to the report.
“Sharif’s involvement in Hamas was no secret,” U.N. Watch said. “For over a decade he had been publishing posts showing his Hamas ties on social media, as well as numerous photos of himself with terrorist leaders on a community website. Yet, instead of firing Sharif, UNRWA awarded him with a certificate of appreciation.”
UNRWA suspended Sharif in late February 2024—just months before his demise—after Israel lodged a formal complaint with the U.N.
“At his funeral, Sharif’s body was wrapped in Hamas flags,” the report states. “Hamas’s TV channel released a eulogy video with images of Sharif together with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh walking around town with two Hamas bodyguards.”
UNRWA suspended five of Sharif’s close associates from its teachers’ union in Lebanon shortly after the September 2024 strike amid public pressure over the agency’s ties to Hamas.
“All of these senior UNRWA educators had openly supported Hamas terrorism, incited their students to hatred and violence, and/or participated in meetings with Hamas officials in Lebanon long before UNRWA suspended them,” the U.N. Watch report states. “Moreover, following Sharif’s death, they indicated their readiness to continue Sharif’s mission of indoctrinating impressionable Palestinian children with Hamas ideology.”
For U.N. Watch, the pattern is clear: “UNRWA turns a blind eye to its employees’ ties to Hamas, and to their incitement to Hamas terrorism and antisemitism, unless forced to take action to avoid scandal and preserve its public image in Western countries that are the primary donors.”
Read the full article here
