More than 100 current and former staff members of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) have been referred to the U.S. State Department for their alleged participation in the Oct. 7, 2023, attack against Israel or their links with the Hamas terror group that led it.
They have been referred to the State Department by the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Office of Inspector General (OIG) as part of an investigation. The State Department will review the evidence and consider whether the individuals need to be suspended or debarred, the OIG said in an Aug. 26 statement. Suspension or debarment can exclude these individuals from doing business with the U.S. federal government, including participating in contracts and getting financial assistance.
Three individuals have already been proposed for debarment by the department. The first is a former UNRWA school teacher and a Hamas military operative who allegedly participated in kidnapping operations during the Oct. 7, 2023, attack.
During the attack, Hamas fired rockets from Gaza, providing cover for more than 3,000
who entered Israel, killing 1,200 people and abducting more than 250 people.
The second individual, a former school teacher, was allegedly an operative of the Rafah Brigade of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and was allegedly in Israel during the attack.
A third school teacher, a Hamas operative, allegedly received and held civilian hostages starting from Oct. 7, 2023.
A government-wide debarment is already in effect against one person, Hafez Mousa Mohammed Mousa, identified as an operative of the Hamas East Jabaliya Battalion. According to the OIG, Mousa coordinated communications with other suspected Hamas members during the Oct. 7, 2023, incident while serving as a school principal.
This is the “first known debarment by the U.S. of a terrorist affiliated with a [U.N.] agency responsible for humanitarian assistance programming,” the OIG said.
USAID was officially
down last year. Secretary of State Marco Rubio accused USAID of pushing anti-American ideas worldwide and of collaborating with nongovernmental organizations that were in league with the Chinese Communist Party and other U.S. geopolitical adversaries. The USAID OIG is a statutorily independent oversight entity.
In July 2025, UNRWA dismissed claims that up to 1,400 of its staff members in Gaza have links to Hamas or the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The agency said it has not received any evidence from Israel or other member states backing such accusations.
In a June 11 statement, the United Nations said UNRWA had decided to terminate the employment of 70 staff members in Gaza. The organization said that dismissals do not constitute a validation of any allegations leveled against the individuals.
The USAID OIG said in its recent statement that in addition to the three names proposed for debarment, one more person was suggested for such action. However, the individual has since died, and the proposal was terminated.
The OIG said it expects additional referrals to be made to the State Department as well as potential criminal referrals to the Department of Justice.
“It remains USAID OIG’s investigative priority to ensure that U.S.-funded humanitarian assistance does not fall into the hands of foreign terrorist organizations, depriving assistance from reaching civilians in need,” the OIG stated.
“In support of this effort, USAID OIG, with its unique global oversight capacity, has significant ongoing investigative work aimed at preventing the recirculation of terrorist-affiliated actors across U.S.-funded aid organizations, including [U.N.] entities.”
In February 2025, President Donald Trump
an executive order withdrawing the United States from the U.N. Human Rights Council and ended U.S. funding for UNRWA, with the White House accusing the agency of having “consistently shown itself to be antisemitic and anti-Israel.” The order stated that there were UNRWA employees who took part in the Oct. 7, 2023, attack, and the White House accused Hamas of using UNRWA facilities to store weapons and build tunnels.
Hamas and Israel
In July, Trump said the plan will be implemented in phases and involve the complete disarmament of Hamas and other armed groups in Gaza together with the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the region. An International Stabilization Force and a new Palestinian police force are scheduled to take responsibility for the region’s security.
On Aug. 9, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said during a government meeting that Israeli forces will not withdraw until Hamas is fully disarmed, and that the disarmament must be genuine, while also rejecting the establishment of a Palestinian state.
During an Aug. 26 meeting of the U.N. Security Council, Nickolay E. Mladenov, the Board of Peace’s High Representative for Gaza, said that for the first time, Hamas and other armed factions in Gaza have agreed to hand over their weapons, according to an Aug. 26 post on X by the board.
The groups have also agreed to “transfer full governing authority—civilian and security—to a transitional administration recognized by the United Nations,” Mladenov said.
“We now have the opportunity to dramatically improve life in a sustainable way for Palestinians in Gaza; to provide durable security for Israelis; and to move from a conflict that has destabilized the region,” he said.
A previous version of this article misidentified the U.N. Human Rights Council. The Epoch Times regrets the error.
