Hamas Accuses US-Led Board of Peace of Siding With Israel by Excluding UNRWA

Palestinian group Hamas has criticised the US-created Board of Peace for refusing to work with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), saying the move amounts to embracing an Israeli demand to shut down the agency. Hamas spokesperson Hazem Qassem said on Saturday that the Board's decision represented "a complete alignment with the Zionist [Israeli] position", designed to end UNRWA's operations, block the delivery of aid to Palestinians and erase the right of return.

The Board of Peace announced its position on Friday, stating that "UNRWA's involvement in Gaza is unchanged." In a post on X, the Board said it "will only work with trusted partners who will deliver for the people of Gaza and contribute to a deradicalized Strip", adding that the UN agency "fails on those litmus tests". The statement did not spell out what the agency's role would be, leaving observers to draw their own conclusions about what "unchanged" meant in practice.

Hamas, however, read the language as exclusion. Qassem described it as "strange for the Peace Council to adopt this hostile stance towards UNRWA while simultaneously failing to provide aid to Gaza or compel the occupation to abide by the ceasefire agreement and halt the daily killings of Palestinians in the Strip". The accusation paired the Board's posture towards the UN agency with what Hamas says is its inaction on aid delivery and on Israeli violations of a ceasefire.

The dispute goes to the heart of a long-running diplomatic fault line. UNRWA, established in 1949, has for decades provided education, health and social assistance to Palestinian refugees and, in the view of Palestinians, safeguarded their national rights. Palestinians widely regard the agency as a protector of their right to return to their homeland, while Israel has long campaigned for its dismantling, arguing it is biased or complicit in militant activity.

Against that backdrop, the Board's remarks landed as a diplomatic signal. Referring to Gaza as a Strip that must be "deradicalised" — language echoed in Israeli rhetoric — and to partners who must be "trusted", the statement effectively shifted the burden of proof onto the world's main provider of services to Gaza's population. Critics say criteria of that kind leave the agency in a position where it can be deemed untrustworthy without any replacement mechanism being named for the services it delivers.

Behind the scenes, the picture reported by The Associated Press on Friday was less clear-cut. Board of Peace members have been more willing to engage with UNRWA privately than their public messaging suggested. At the Board's briefing to the UN General Assembly on Wednesday, officials named several UN agencies as partners, but UNRWA was not among them. However, a Board official, speaking to the AP on condition of anonymity, confirmed that members had met UNRWA officials several times, and said the agency's programmes could continue if they served Gaza's residents well. The same official insisted that "UNRWA's days are over" — a position that sits uneasily with the private contacts.

The gap between those positions was highlighted by Philippe Lazzarini, who led UNRWA until earlier this year. He told the AP that members of the Palestinian technocratic committee appointed by the Board to govern Gaza want to work with the agency, meaning the administration's own local partners are not aligned with its public messaging. Lazzarini went further on Thursday, accusing the Board of failing to deliver on its mandate and saying Israeli authorities are still blocking basic aid "as part of a wider plan to keep Gaza unlivable for Palestinians".

"Grandiose plans is what the Board of Peace does best. Plans however will not keep the people of Gaza warm this winter," he added, urging that crossings into Gaza be opened and supplies allowed in at scale. His comments underline the practical stakes of the dispute: for Gaza's largely aid-dependent population, questions of who delivers services and at what volume matter more than the language of partnership.

The political declarations came against a backdrop of continued Israeli military operations. On Saturday, Gaza's Ministry of Health said Israeli attacks killed seven Palestinians across the Gaza Strip in the preceding 48 hours, including one person who later succumbed to wounds sustained earlier. In northern Gaza, Israeli forces shot dead a Palestinian in Jabalia, according to the Palestinian news agency Wafa. A drone strike near Joulis Street and the al-Nouri Tower in the Nuseirat refugee camp killed another person and wounded others.

In al-Mawasi, in Khan Younis, a drone strike wounded several Palestinians, including a girl, while Israeli artillery shelled areas east of the city. An Israeli quadcopter also opened fire on Salah al-Din Street in central Gaza, wounding three people, including another girl. Images published by Reuters and AFP show smoke rising from a site targeted in al-Mawasi on September 25, and Palestinian children returning to an UNRWA school in Nuseirat for the first day of the 2026 school year on September 19 — a reminder of the civilian services the dispute concerns.

Violations were also reported in the occupied West Bank. Israeli forces stormed Ramallah-based Birzeit University, raiding a building while students were sitting final examinations, Wafa reported. In Tulkarem, forces arrested resident Bashar Odeh after raiding his home in Shuweika and interrogated others during home searches in Zeita. In the Bethlehem governorate, Israeli forces closed military gates at the entrances to western villages, stopping residents, including pedestrians, from passing. Raids continued in other localities, including the Qalandiya and Am'ari refugee camps.

Taken together, the rows over UNRWA illustrate a broader tension in the post-ceasefire framework: Washington's chosen partners insist they will work only with vetted implementers, while Palestinians and the agency's leadership warn that an undefined standard of trust risks leaving the Strip without the schools, clinics and basic services on which millions depend. The Board's insistence that "UNRWA's days are over" and Hamas's charge of alignment with Israel now sit on opposite sides of that unresolved question, one that will shape how aid reaches Gaza through the winter.