UN Watchdog Accuses UNRWA of Letting Hamas Take Over Its Schools, Turning Classrooms Into ‘Incubators Of Hate’

A Geneva-based watchdog UN Watch charges that the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) allowed Hamas terrorists to dominate its education system, fostering radicalization and violence, Jewish Insider reported Monday. The study says the agency ignored clear evidence of terror involvement by senior staff inside its schools.

UNRWA, which collects more than $1 billion a year from Western governments to teach Palestinian children values such as peace and tolerance, “didn’t just tolerate extremism,” the report argues. “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 institutionalized it, turning classrooms into incubators of hate.”

Although UNRWA is formally headed by Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini and other international officials, the report notes that the agency’s work on the ground is almost entirely run by local personnel, over 99% of its 30,000 staff, many of whom in Gaza and Lebanon are Hamas members or loyalists. Just 120 employees are international hires paid through the UN in New York.

UN Watch documented widespread support for Hamas among staff. A 3,000-member Telegram group of UNRWA employees reportedly celebrated the October 7 attacks on Israel. One example cited was Suhail al-Hindi, a school principal and chair of the UNRWA Gaza Staff Union, who was publicly linked to Hamas terror leadership yet remained in place.

In Lebanon, the watchdog highlighted Fateh Sharif, principal of UNRWA’s Deir Yassin School and head of its Lebanon teachers’ union, who simultaneously served as Hamas leader in the country. Despite years of extremist activity and open praise for violence on social media, Sharif was only briefly suspended in 2024, months before being killed in an Israeli airstrike.

According to UN Watch, Hamas has “hijacked UNRWA’s education through its domination of the local UNRWA staff unions,” controlling curriculum and blocking disciplinary measures against teachers who glorify terrorism or incite antisemitism. Terror operatives were allegedly placed in senior posts to shield them from accountability.

The report recounts how al-Hindi, elected to Hamas’s politburo in 2017, resigned under pressure but retained influence through the Gaza Professional Unions Assembly, which oversees UNRWA’s staff union. His successor, Hamas member Amir al-Mishal, allegedly diverted agency employee funds to Hamas via the Hamas-run Al-Intaj Bank. Later, Mustafa al-Ghoul, an UNRWA dentist, took over the union’s Gaza branch on a Hamas-affiliated slate.

Other names cited include school principal Mohammad Shuwaideh, described as a Hamas squad commander; Mahmoud Ahmed Mohammad Hamdan, one of 12 UNRWA educators exposed as Hamas operatives by Israel in 2024; and Hani Kaskin, identified as a Palestinian Islamic Jihad member.

UN Watch also tracked Sharif’s long record of glorifying attacks on Israelis, from posting a 2014 photo of a boy in an UNRWA uniform holding a gun to lauding the killers of IDF soldier Tomer Hazan Hy’d. Even after Egypt declared Hamas a terror group, Sharif wrote that Hamas resistance was “an honor” and “not terrorism,” with likes from fellow UNRWA employees.

When asked why Sharif had not been dismissed, UN spokesman Stéphane Dujarric said underground operatives “try not to have their involvement known publicly.” Lazzarini later told journalists that an inquiry into Sharif’s ties was “still ongoing” when he was killed. After his death, both UNRWA and Hamas issued tributes, and his body was wrapped in a Hamas flag.

The report lists 13 other senior educators in Gaza with Hamas connections, concluding that UNRWA has shown no shock at discovering its own teachers are terror leaders. According to UN Watch, UNRWA schools have been used to raise a generation “committed to the resistance,” prepared for “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,” the watchdog wrote.