UNRWA faces US lawsuit over alleged ties to Hamas after legal immunity revoked
The Trump government has determined that the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees can be sued, changing the U.S. administration’s previous stance that the agency was shielded from civil liability.
The Justice Department announced its new position in a letter it submitted to a federal court in New York on Thursday as part of a lawsuit seeking to hold the organization UNRWA responsible for the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist raid on Israel by Hamas. The shift in stance highlights the toughened view of the agency during the Trump government after claims by Israel that part of the organization’s personnel were implicated in the Hamas spree.
The suit, brought by relatives of some of the sufferers of the massacre, claims that UNRWA had assisted Hamas by, among other things, allowing arms hold and deployment facilities in its schools and medical clinics and by hiring Hamas members. Attorneys for UNRWA have described the suit as “absurd” and have stated in court documents that the agency was unsusceptible from penalty as a “subsidiary organ” of the United Nations.
The earlier US position safeguarded the agency
In a declaration, UNRWA representative Juliette Touma expressed the Justice Department filing switched the U.S. government’s “longstanding distinction that UNRWA is a subsidiary agency of the General Assembly and an essential part of the United Nations, allowed to exemption from legal procedure.” She expressed the agency would persist in making its case before the bench and “will assess whether any other activity is reasonable with respect to the letter.”
The Justice Department recognized in its 10-page letter that while it previously believed UNRWA was protected from lawsuits, “the Government has since reevaluated that position, and now concludes UNRWA is not immune from this litigation.”
“The objection in this case alleges inhuman behavior on the part of UNRWA and its officials. Of course, such allegations are only the first stage on a long road where complainants will be needed to prove what they have alleged. But UNRWA is not beyond that approach — nor are the majority of the remaining defendants,” the letter says. “The Government acknowledges they must respond to these allegations in American tribunals. The prior Administration’s opinion that they do not was false.”
Since the 1940s, the agency has provided assistance to Palestinians
UNRWA was created by the U.N. General Assembly in 1949 to offer relief to Palestinians who had escaped or were displaced from their houses during and prior to the 1948 Arab-Israeli fighting, which erupted after the founding of Israel, and their descendants until there was a political resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.
The agency offers assistance and services — health and education among them — to about 2.5 million Palestinian refugees in Gaza, the occupied West Bank, and east Jerusalem and 3 million additional ones in Syria, Jordan and Lebanon. It has been the primary lifeline for a population that is dependent on humanitarian assistance in Gaza since the Israel-Hamas war.
