A new bipartisan bill introduced by Reps. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) and Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) to permanently dismantle and replace the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, some of whose members participated directly in the Oct. 7 attacks, is long overdue, an expert told JNS.
“It’s trying to put the administration’s words into action,” Yoni Tobin, senior policy analyst at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, told JNS on Tuesday, when the bill was introduced.
“It sort of lays out a roadmap for how to actually create not only a pathway to dismantle UNRWA but to replace it,” he said. “To ensure that there is an entity that does what UNRWA was supposed to do all these years but didn’t do.”
The Replace UNRWA with Real Humanitarian Assistance Act would require the U.S. secretary of state to submit, within 180 days, a “comprehensive strategy, coordinated with international partners and allies,” for dismantling the agency, which the U.N. General Assembly created in December 1949 to assist Palestinian refugees.
UNRWA has no mandate to resettle refugees or pursue other permanent solutions to their status, and its registry has only grown since the agency’s founding, because it continues refugees and their descendants to be “refugees” in perpetuity.
The plan would include a detailed timeline to wind the agency down, identify the governmental or nongovernmental entities that would assume its responsibilities and outline funding and transition plans.
The U.S. secretary of state would be required to begin implementing the plan within one year of submitting the strategy.
“UNRWA has repeatedly failed to meet the basic standards of accountability and neutrality that the international community should expect from any humanitarian organization,” Lawler stated. “Credible reports have exposed serious failures within the agency, including employees with ties to terrorist organizations and educational materials that promote antisemitism and incite violence.”
He added that dismantling the organization would not interrupt “humanitarian aid” to those who need it, while preventing the strengthening of “organizations that undermine peace and security.”
A June report from the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Office of Inspector General stated that its investigation had resulted in suspension or debarment referrals for more than 100 current or former UNRWA staff members who participated in the Oct. 7 attacks or had ties to the terrorist group.
The individuals included school principals, teachers, security personnel, attendants, psychosocial counselors and medical professionals.
“Democrats and Republicans agree. We can’t keep funneling money through an organization that teaches kids to hate and employs Hamas terrorists involved in the Oct. 7 attack,” Gottheimer stated.
“That’s why our bill requires a responsible, phased transition to replace UNRWA with accountable partners and makes sure aid reaches the people who need it,” he stated. “Aid should feed families, not fund terror.”
Several Jewish organizations have supported the legislation, including AIPAC, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and Christians United for Israel Action Fund.
Tobin told JNS that the U.S.-led Board of Peace has already adopted a policy of ensuring that UNRWA has no place in Gaza’s future. The legislation, he said, lays out a plan for “how to actually make that come to fruition.”
“There needs to be some plan, some action item, while we have this window of opportunity,” he said, “while the United States is actively seeking the dismantlement of UNRWA as formal government policy, while Congress is receptive to the idea, while Hamas is militarily weak and while we have momentum with the Board of Peace.”
Since 2000, the United States has provided more than $5.2 billion to UNRWA, “and in return, it’s gotten a hostile, rogue agency that is an obstacle to peace in Gaza,” according to Tobin.
“When news broke in January 2024 that nearly a dozen UNRWA personnel participated in Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre, it was shocking but not surprising,” he said. “UNRWA’s many structural problems for decades have included a very cozy relationship with terrorists in Gaza, many of whom had infiltrated the agency.”
“This is not a case of a few bad apples,” he told JNS. “It’s a case of a rotten tree.”
The Trump administration barred federal agencies from providing funding to UNRWA through an executive order in February 2025. Cutting off U.S. funding alone, however, is insufficient, Tobin said, because a future administration could reverse the policy and UNRWA can continue raising money from other countries.
“For UNRWA to really be taken out of the equation in Gaza, which is long overdue, the United States needs to get its partners on board and ensure that funding isn’t coming to UNRWA from any source,” he told JNS.
The agency is “not a distinct entity from Hamas,” but rather has “been co-opted by Hamas,” Tobin said. Intelligence estimates suggest that about half of UNRWA’s 12,000 employees in Gaza have family members with terrorist ties and that another 1,000 employees are under U.S. investigation for alleged involvement in terrorism, he said.
“When you’re looking at an organization like UNRWA, with decades and decades of evidence that are publicly available for anyone to see of its deep rot, which goes beyond terrorism, it extends into deep corruption and just plainly being an ineffectual organization,” he said.
“If you look at some of the test scores and metrics coming out of Gaza schools from the early 2000s, not long after Hamas took power in Gaza, you’ll see that most kids in Gaza, as a result of UNRWA’s miseducation of them, lacked the basic ability to do math, read and write,” he told JNS.
UNRWA is concerned with two things, according to Tobin, “self-preservation and sheltering or enabling terrorism and terrorists.”
“UNRWA has been sheltering Hamas for years, and it’s time to end that,” he told JNS.
