US citizens who were victims of Hamas and Hezbollah attacks, as well as relatives of such individuals, are suing the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA, demanding it be held liable for aiding and enabling the actions of the terror groups.
The New York Times reports that the lawsuit was filed Thursday at a federal court in DC, based on a Department of Justice decision in April that UNRWA is not entitled to immunity from US lawsuits.
According to the complaint, UNRWA has provided material aid to Hamas and Hezbollah in violation of antiterrorism laws. It also claims that UNRWA USA of assisting by gathering donations.
The lawsuit alleges that rather than promoting peace and coexistence, UNRWA actively encourages anti-Israel and antisemitic attitudes through its positions, services, and education system.
A second lawsuit filed in New York last year by the families of more than 100 victims of the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led terror assault is ongoing.
UNRWA, formally titled the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, was established in 1949 following the 1948 War of Independence with Arab armies that accompanied the creation of the modern State of Israel. It provides aid, health and education to millions of Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, and neighboring Arab countries — Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan.
Some 5.9 million people are registered as Palestinian refugees by UNRWA, because they are descended from Arabs displaced in the war surrounding Israel’s creation in 1948.
Israel has long argued that UNRWA perpetuates the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by using this definition of refugee, the only case globally in which the status is passed down generationally. The rest of the world’s refugees are under a different UN agency that doesn’t enable passing down the status to offspring who themselves haven’t been displaced. The UNRWA definition of refugees means that the Palestinian refugee population is always increasing over time, even when the refugee descendants attain citizenship in another country.
An Israeli ban on the agency was passed by the Knesset in November with a large majority that included the support of opposition parties, amid a series of revelations about employees of the agency who were actively involved in terror groups in the Gaza Strip, participation of some of its staff in the October 7 Hamas invasion and slaughter, and repeated use of UNRWA infrastructure for terror activities.
Israel has also provided evidence that the agency’s schools incited hatred of Israel and glorification of attacks against Israelis.
In September 2024, the Department of Justice, then under the administration of former president Joe Biden, asserted that the UN had not waived its immunity in US courts, and as such UNRWA was exempt from prosecution and the New York lawsuit could not proceed.
But in April, the department said that while “previously, the Government expressed the view that certain immunities shielded UNRWA from having to answer” to allegations regarding its role in the “heinous offenses” of October 7, it had “since reevaluated that position, and now concludes UNRWA is not immune from this litigation.”
Presenting its position, the department stated that while the UN in and of itself enjoys immunity in US courts, its “subsidiary organs,” such as UNRWA, do not.