Amid fresh accusations of famine in the Gaza Strip, and demands by the United Kingdom, France, and Canada to “immediately allow humanitarian aid to enter Gaza,” Israel has agreed to allow aid shipments to resume. However, foreign demands notwithstanding, that aid will not be delivered by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), the United Nations’ corrupt, biased, and compromised steward of Palestinian aid.
To replace UNRWA, the United States and Israel have proposed a novel plan to funnel food and essential humanitarian supplies into the Hamas-ruled territory, implemented by a new charitable organization called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Yet the UN opposes the new aid mechanism, insisting that it must continue to be central in any aid effort.
The bankruptcy of the UN aid process in Gaza is well-documented. For years UNRWA has willfully violated the humanitarian principles of humanity, impartiality, independence, and neutrality with nary a peep of objection from the UN.
Israel has provided evidence of extensive infiltration of UNRWA by terrorist groups, including that over a thousand UNRWA employees in Gaza – 12 percent of all employees – were members of Hamas or other terrorist groups. Similarly, Israel asserts that 15 percent of principals and deputy-principals at UNRWA schools were members of terrorist organizations. Unsurprisingly, celebrations of terrorism and martyrdom are commonly included in UNRWA educational textbooks and materials. UNRWA employees even participated in the October 7 terrorist attack.
For years, Hamas and other terrorist groups have exploited UNRWA schools, hospitals, and other facilities to store weapons, launch attacks, and house command centers, not just in Gaza, but wherever UNRWA operates. This was a deliberate tactic designed to use the protected status of UNRWA to shield terrorists from detection and retribution. Past decisions to return weapons discovered in UNRWA facilities to Hamas only underscore that the organization is eager to overlook such violations.
But there’s more to the story. UNRWA’s complicity with Hamas was not passive tolerance of the powers that rule Gaza. Much of the UN’s humanitarian work has, since October 7, revealed itself to be sympathetic to Hamas’s aims, if not the terrorist group’s methods. Nor is Hamas a UN-designated terrorist organization, meaning that when the US Congress has demanded that UN bar individuals affiliated with terrorist groups, affiliation with Hamas has not been disqualifying.
For these and other reasons, Israel banned UNRWA from operating within its territory and significantly limited aid into Gaza, citing concerns that Hamas was diverting the supplies. Instead, Israel sought to establish an alternative aid system less vulnerable to Hamas interference. The United Nations has rejected the proposal, claiming the new Foundation fails to meet global humanitarian principles of humanity, impartiality, independence, and neutrality – which brazenly ignores the fact that UNRWA itself has been repeatedly accused of violating those very standards.
Frustrated, the UN turned to its trump card – asserting that Israel is causing a famine. Since the early stages of the conflict, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), affiliated with the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, along with the USAID-founded Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET), have released regular assessments of Gaza’s food security. In both early and late 2024, these organizations warned that famine was either looming or already affecting certain areas of the region. Legal cases in the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court cited these allegations.
Yet even the IPC’s Famine Review Committee allowed mid-2024 that famine was not occurring. Likewise, the FEWS NET report was retracted. What soon became clear was that miscalculations across the board, including about amounts of food entering Gaza, nutrition levels before war broke out, and false data about deaths were factored into a biased reporting system.
Notwithstanding 2024’s false alarms, an Israeli government decision to close the Gaza border to food shipments in March 2025 precipitated another round of accusations of imminent famine. Under pressure, Israel relented. But this time, UNRWA will be shut out, as aid will enter via the UN World Food Program, World Central Kitchen, and others until the new U.S. and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is operational.
As usual, drama regarding accusations against the Israeli government obscures the ongoing problem of United Nations bias. Yes, the UN dismissed those UNRWA employees shown to have participated in the October 7 terrorist attack. But they have not been held to account. In fact, the UN Secretary General has refused to waive the immunities and privileges they enjoy as UN employees and asserted these protections in its argument to dismiss a lawsuit by October 7 victims the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan.
Outrageously, the Biden administration supported the UN argument even though immunity provided under the Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations only applies to officials acting within the scope of their legitimate duties. Killing, torturing, and kidnapping civilians hardly constitutes legitimate UN duties. Any UN employee who provided material support to terrorists or participated in serious crimes should not be protected by international legal privilege—they should be prosecuted.
This brings us back to the question of delivering aid to Gaza. Any organization with UNRWA’s record would normally be ostracized. But the UN system has, instead, rushed to defend it. In a joint statement, the UN and its aid partners insist that they must deliver aid and supplies as they see fit irrespective of Israeli security concerns and irrespective of the repeated theft and diversion of aid by Hamas under their watch.
According to the Secretary General, “There is no alternative to UNRWA.” In fact, there is. If the priority is truly to help the innocent in Gaza, the UN should be willing to work with Israel to deliver aid even if it sidelines UNRWA.
