House Republicans urge congressional leaders to ensure prohibition on UNRWA funding in 2025
'Terror is in woven into the fabric of UNRWA, and there is no hope for peace in the Middle East if UNRWA is allowed to continue to operate,’ lawmakers said
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Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-TX) listens during a hearing with the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic on Capitol Hill on July 11, 2023 in Washington, DC.
As lawmakers work to finalize a stopgap spending package before a funding deadline later this month, a group of House Republicans is urging congressional leaders to ensure that U.S. funding to U.N. Relief and Works Agency remains banned in the upcoming bill and that the U.S. works to begin to dismantle the agency.
Lawmakers have blocked funding to UNRWA in several recent spending bills, following the revelation that some of its employees were involved in the Oct. 7 attacks. Subsequent revelations have tied other staffers to terrorist organizations as well. Republicans have made UNRWA funding a red line in those debates, while a growing number of Democrats have pushed for the funding to be restored.
“Terror is woven into the fabric of UNRWA, and there is no hope for peace in the Middle East if UNRWA is allowed to continue to operate, which is why we call for a continued prohibition on providing federal funding for UNRWA,” the lawmakers said in a letter to the top four congressional leaders.
The Republicans said that “UNRWA has refused to change its practices and continues to allow the infiltration of terror into its ranks,” in spite of pressure from the U.S., once UNRWA’s largest supporter before it cut off funding at the beginning of the year.
“It is critical” that the U.S. work to “finally do away with the agency that is responsible for so much suffering and focus more on constituting more effective aid distribution mechanisms.”
The Republicans said the U.S. “must continue to work in lock step” with Israel, which passed a law banning UNRWA, and that the agency “has lost our faith in its ability to operate in the best interest of the people it is meant to help.”
The letter was led by Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-TX) and co-signed by Reps. Joe Wilson (R-SC), Warren Davidson (R-OH), Keith Self (R-TX), Tom Kean Jr. (R-NJ), Randy Weber (R-TX), Dan Meuser (R-PA), Diana Harshbarger (R-TN) and Tom Tiffany (R-WI).
“UNRWA is an organization compromised by terrorist sympathizers and far-left globalists!” Jackson said in a statement to JI. He added that the agency “is more interested in fueling terror and supporting Hamas than it is in helping innocent civilians.”