‘PR Stunt’: State Department’s Temporary Funding Pause for Terror-Linked U.N. Agency Met with Skepticism

The State Department moved to temporarily suspend funding to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East after the agency revealed today that Israel has presented it with evidence that twelve of its employees took part in the October 7 terrorist attacks.

The allegations that Israel presented to the U.N. were apparently serious enough that UNRWA — which has bristled at external reporting on its employees’ links to terror — fired several staff members and launched an investigation into the situation. Senator Jim Risch, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said today that the UNRWA staffers had allegedly taken part in the October 7 attack and the kidnapping of Israelis.

Citing the egregious nature of the revelations, critics of the Biden administration’s response argue that a temporary pause in funding isn’t enough — and some experts even believe that State is positioning itself to resume funding to UNRWA at a later date.

“This looks to be a PR stunt to preempt congressional action and ensure aid continues on the other side,” Richard Goldberg, a former national-security-council official and senior adviser to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, wrote on social media. He said that the administration hoped that Congress would respond to the funding pause with a legislative effort to impose a permanent ban on UNRWA funding.

While the Trump administration had cut all U.S. funding to UNRWA in 2018, citing the agency’s links to terrorism, President Biden reinstated it in 2021, approving hundreds of million of dollars in new funding. The U.S. is UNRWA’s largest donor.

The State Department’s statement says that the U.S. is “extremely troubled” by the revelations but suggests that U.N. leadership’s handling of the matter has been sufficient. It notes that Secretary of State Antony Blinken was aware of the situation at least as early as yesterday, when he called U.N. secretary-general António Guterres to discuss the allegations. This indicates that Foggy Bottom waited for UNRWA to announce that it had learned of the allegations and fired the staffers allegedly involved in October 7 before making its funding suspension public.

State also reiterated its previous praise of UNRWA, saying that the agency plays a “critical role” in delivering aid to Palestinians, which has not defused any skepticism of the funding pause on Capitol Hill.

Senator Tom Cotton responded to State’s praise of UNRWA by writing on social media: “The Biden Administration can’t even announce the halt of funding to UNRWA terrorists without equivocating. UNRWA should never receive another dime from the U.S.”

Several other GOP lawmakers made a similar point.

“Today’s news is yet another example that underscores how corrupt this organization truly is,” Senator Risch said in a statement this morning. He called on the Biden administration to “immediately cease funding to UNRWA.”

Representative Elise Stefanik, chairwoman of the House GOP Conference, wrote in a statement posted to social media that Biden’s resumption of funding to UNRWA enabled “the proliferation of abhorrent and antisemitic educational materials to be used across Gaza and filled the coffers of Hamas.”

“The Biden Administration’s limited suspension of funds to UNRWA to cover up for their disastrous mistake is unacceptable. Joe Biden must permanently cut off all funding to this antisemitic and violent organization,” she added.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee is scheduled to hold a hearing on Tuesday focused on exposing UNRWA’s failures, and the committee has previously requested that UNRWA commissioner-general Philippe Lazzarini testify before it.