More than 100 current or former employees of the United Nations' Palestinian relief agency have been referred to the U.S. State Department over their alleged participation in the October 7, 2023, terror attacks in Israel.
The USAID Inspector General's office announced the referrals on Wednesday, marking a dramatic escalation in the U.S. government's scrutiny of UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees. The agency, which operates schools, clinics, and aid programs across Gaza and the broader region, has faced mounting allegations that its workforce harbored Hamas operatives who played active roles in the deadliest attack on Israeli civilians in the nation's history.
The inspector general recommended three individuals for debarment, a formal process that bars a person from receiving U.S. government contracts or assistance. One of those debarments has already been completed. The State Department acted after the individual, a former UNRWA school principal, was found to have coordinated communications with other suspected Hamas members during the October 7 attacks. A second referral, involving a former UNRWA school teacher described as a Hamas operative, alleges the individual received and held civilian hostages beginning on October 7. A third debarment proposal was withdrawn after records indicated the individual was deceased.
The new referrals dwarf an earlier finding. A previous USAID watchdog review, completed in March, had linked 14 UNRWA employees to Hamas. That number alone prompted bipartisan alarm in Congress and added fuel to efforts to cut off American funding to the agency. Now the inspector general's office says the real figure exceeds 100, and it expects more referrals to follow, including potential criminal referrals to the U.S. Department of Justice.
The USAID Inspector General's office did not provide a final count, Just the News reported, leaving open the possibility that the total number of implicated employees could climb further. The office has not detailed the specific actions alleged against every referred individual beyond the three debarment cases.
That gap matters. The three cases described so far, coordinating with Hamas during the attack, holding hostages, and a third individual now dead, suggest a range of involvement that stretches from logistical support to direct participation in violence against civilians. What the remaining referrals involve remains unclear.
The Trump administration shut down USAID last year, folding its functions into the State Department as part of a broader push to streamline foreign-aid bureaucracy and eliminate what officials described as waste and ideological drift. But the agency's Office of Inspector General survived the reorganization and continued its investigation into UNRWA's workforce.
That persistence produced results. The inspector general's announcement lands at a moment when UNRWA's credibility is already in tatters among American lawmakers and allied governments. Israel has long accused the agency of tolerating, and in some cases enabling, Hamas infiltration of its ranks. UNRWA has repeatedly denied institutional complicity, but the sheer number of referred employees makes that defense harder to sustain.
Criminal referrals to the Department of Justice, if they materialize, would represent a further escalation. Debarment bars individuals from U.S.-funded work. Criminal prosecution could carry prison time and send a signal that American law enforcement treats participation in terror attacks against civilians as a prosecutable offense regardless of the perpetrator's employer.
The details already public are damning enough. One debarred individual served as a principal at an UNRWA school, a position funded, in part, by international donors including the United States. During the October 7 attacks, this person allegedly coordinated communications with other suspected Hamas members. The inspector general found enough evidence to complete the debarment process, the only one of the three to reach that stage so far.
The second case involves a former UNRWA school teacher whom the inspector general described as a Hamas operative. The allegation: this individual received and held civilian hostages beginning on October 7, 2023. That referral remains pending with the State Department.
Both cases involve people who worked in UNRWA schools, institutions that serve Palestinian children and that donor governments have funded for decades on the assumption they are civilian, humanitarian operations. If a school principal coordinated with Hamas attackers and a school teacher held hostages, the question is no longer whether UNRWA had a problem. The question is how deep the problem runs.
Several critical details remain unresolved. The inspector general's office has not said whether the 100-plus referred employees overlap with the 14 identified in the earlier March finding or represent an entirely separate group. It has not named any of the individuals. And it has not disclosed how many of the referred employees are current versus former UNRWA staff, a distinction that matters for assessing whether the agency cleaned house or continued employing people tied to the attacks.
The State Department has not publicly confirmed receipt of the referrals or commented on the expected additional cases. The Department of Justice has not indicated whether it has received or acted on any criminal referrals as of the announcement date.
Those silences leave a gap between the inspector general's findings and any concrete accountability beyond a single debarment. Referrals are a start. They are not convictions, sanctions, or policy changes. What the State Department and DOJ do next will determine whether these findings carry consequences or gather dust.
For years, defenders of UNRWA argued that allegations of Hamas infiltration were overblown or politically motivated. More than 100 referrals from America's own inspector general make that argument sound less like a defense and more like a confession of willful blindness.
