The United Nations Relief and Works Agency turned a blind eye as Hamas terror chiefs held top positions within the UNRWA educational system and promoted terrorism and radicalization, a scathing new report by the watchdog UN Watch has revealed.
UNRWA raises over $1 billion annually from Western states under the stated aim of educating Palestinian children with values such as peace, tolerance, and universal human rights. However, the report argued that “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 UN agency institutionalized it, turning classrooms into incubators of hate.”
Despite seemingly being led by an international team under Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini, UN Watch found that the majority of UNRWA’s operations on the ground are led by local leaders, who, especially in Gaza and Lebanon, are Hamas members or leaders.
In fact, over 99% of UNRWA’s 30,000 employees are area staff. Only 120 employees at the agency are international staff, funded by the United Nations in New York.
Of the local staff, support for Hamas is rampant. UN Watch previously revealed that a 3,000-member UNRWA staff Telegram chat group cheered the October 7 atrocities. Prior to October 7, UNRWA school principal and UNRWA Gaza Staff Union head Suhail al-Hindi was publicly revealed to be involved with Hamas terror chiefs, but was not fired.
Similarly, in Lebanon, UNRWA management failed to fire Fateh Sharif, who had served for years simultaneously as the head of the UNRWA Lebanon Teachers’ Union and as a senior leader of Hamas in Lebanon.
As such, UN Watch claims that Hamas has “hijacked UNRWA’s education through its domination of the local UNRWA staff unions, particularly the teachers’ sectors of the unions, enabling Hamas to control UNRWA schools.”
Methods of control include, it argues, preventing the agency from de-radicalizing the curriculum, blocking efforts by UNRWA to discipline staff for inciting antisemitism and jihadi terrorism, and placing Hamas operatives in senior educator positions in schools.
Suhail Al-Hindi and UNRWA Gaza
AS MENTIONED, Hindi was both a leader in Hamas and a prominent figure in UNRWA, overseeing approximately 8,000 teachers and 220,000 students.
When Hindi was elected to the Hamas politburo in 2017, he was forced to resign from UNRWA. He went on to lead the Hamas “March of Return” committee, billed as “peaceful protests” but designed to test and study Israeli defenses in preparation for the Hamas invasion, which eventually took place on October 7.
Hindi lauded October 7 as an achievement and has since served as a key Hamas spokesperson and member of the Hamas ceasefire negotiating team.
However, UN Watch notes that UNRWA had been aware of Hindi’s long-standing Hamas involvement for many years prior to his eventual resignation.
In 2011, Hindi appeared on stage next to Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, prompting UNRWA to suspend him for three months. Hindi, however, responded with a pressure campaign, shutting down UNRWA schools and threatening the organization until he was allowed back.
UN Watch reports that not only was Hindi allowed to resume his position, but he also succeeded in pressuring UNRWA to accept his demand that no UNRWA employee be disciplined for involvement in Hamas activities.
He was, as mentioned, forced to resign in 2017. At his retirement ceremony, his colleagues praised him for rejecting teaching Holocaust education in UNRWA schools and for working to ensure that UNRWA management did not stop employees from taking part in Hamas activities.
Despite having officially left UNRWA, Hindi has remained influential. UN Watch notes that he became head of the Gaza Professional Unions Assembly, which oversees the UNRWA Union, and therefore continued to influence decisions.
Hindi was succeeded by Hamas member Amir al-Mishal, who also belongs to a prominent Hamas family. Mishal used his UNRWA position to siphon UNRWA employee funds to Hamas, UN Watch added. He achieved this by exploiting his position on the Board of Directors of the Hamas-controlled Al-Intaj Bank to take deposits from Gaza civilians and send them to Hamas.
After Mishal’s retirement in April 2023, he was succeeded by Mustafa al-Ghoul, an UNRWA orthodontist. He was elected to the UNRWA Gaza Staff Union on the Hamas-affiliated list.
The UN Watch report also lists other key members of the UNRWA program in Gaza who were involved with Hamas.
One such individual was Mohammad Shuwaideh, an UNRWA school principal and also a Hamas squad commander in the Gaza City Brigade. Another was UNRWA principal Mahmoud Ahmed Mohammad Hamdan, one of 12 UNRWA educators revealed to be Hamas members by Israel in July 2024. Another UNRWA member, Hani Kaskin, was also a member of Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Fateh Sharif was an UNRWA school principal at the Deir Yasin school in Lebanon and head of the UNRWA Lebanon Teachers’ Union, in charge of 2,000 teachers and 39,000 students.
Simultaneously, Sharif was Hamas’s leader in Lebanon (according to the terror group itself). He straddled both roles for over a decade before being killed in a targeted Israeli airstrike on September 30, 2024.
WHEN ASKED why the UN failed to act on Sharif, Stéphane Dujarric, spokesperson of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, said, “Most people who are engaged in underground organizations try not to have their involvement known publicly.”
However, the UN Watch report reveals that UNRWA knew of Sharif and his colleagues’ positions in Hamas and support for terrorism but failed to act.
For over 10 years, Sharif openly promoted terrorism on his public social media, including praising the “hero” terrorist who kidnapped and murdered an Israeli soldier named Tomer Hazan in 2013.
In January 2014, he posted a picture of a young boy in a UNRWA school uniform holding a gun. When Egypt put Hamas on its terrorist list in 2015, Sharif wrote that Hamas resistance is “an honor” and “not terrorism.” Several of his UNRWA colleagues liked his post.
During the 2015 knife intifada, in which Palestinian terrorists perpetrated over 200 stabbing attacks against Israelis, Sharif said, “Today we are witnessing a new generation of martyrs who have written stories of heroism and proven that fighting the enemy does not require strategic weapons, but only belief that Palestine belongs solely to us. The love for Palestine is demonstrated only by sacrificing the most precious things for the sake of its liberation. What is happening today in Palestine is a natural response to the crimes of the Zionist occupation.”
The report goes on to detail dozens of similar posts, including Sharif’s public endorsement of Hamas’s attacks on October 7.
After decades of inaction, UNRWA suspended Sharif for three months for “political activities violating neutrality” in February 2024.
The move sparked backlash, and the UNRWA Lebanon Teachers’ Union issued a statement in support of Sharif, accusing UNRWA of “playing with fire.”
Various Palestinian terror groups also came out in support of Sharif, including Hamas, the PFLP, and PIJ. The coalition of terror groups threatened UNRWA management, saying, “Our countrymen in Lebanon will oppose any malicious step taken against any employee by UNRWA’s management in Lebanon… through peaceful and gradually intensifying protest movements using various measures and methods.”
Sharif, alongside the terror coalition, proceeded to coordinate protests at UNRWA premises in Lebanon.
After Sharif’s death, he was publicly eulogized by both UNRWA and Hamas. His body was wrapped in a Hamas flag at his funeral.
When questioned at a UN press conference in Geneva on the day Sharif was killed as to why Sharif had not been fired, Lazzarini responded that “the investigation was still ongoing” into Sharif’s Hamas ties.
Like with Hindi, many of Sharif’s UNRWA colleagues were also Hamas members. The UN Watch report details 13 individuals, including several school principals and deputy principals.
According to UN Watch, UNRWA never expressed any shock at the fact that its top educators are terrorist leaders and that UN schools are being used for “building an educated generation” that is “committed to the resistance,” to “the struggle for the liberation of Palestine,” and to “a journey full of sacrifice” and “blood.”
“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,” UN Watch concluded.
UN Watch alleged that UNRWA’s international leaders know that they have no control over their local staff and are powerless to enforce neutrality in the face of such opposition.