Ammon News - Trump administration officials have held advanced discussions on hitting U.N. Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA with terrorism-related sanctions, said two sources with direct knowledge of the matter, prompting serious legal and humanitarian concerns inside the State Department.

The United Nations agency operates in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria, providing aid, schooling, healthcare, social services and shelter to millions of Palestinians.

Top U.N. officials and the U.N. Security Council have described UNRWA as the backbone of the aid response in Gaza, where the two-year war between Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas unleashed a humanitarian catastrophe.

The Trump administration, however, has accused the agency of links with Hamas, allegations UNRWA has vigorously disputed.

Washington was long UNRWA's biggest donor, but halted funding in January 2024 after Israel accused about a dozen UNRWA staff of taking part in the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack that triggered the war in Gaza. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio then accused the agency in October this year of becoming "a subsidiary of Hamas," which the U.S. designated as a terrorist organization in 1997.

It was not immediately clear if current U.S. discussions were focused on sanctioning the entire agency - or just specific UNRWA officials or parts of its operation, and U.S. officials do not appear to have settled on the precise type of sanctions they would deploy against UNRWA.

Among the possibilities that State Department officials have discussed include declaring UNRWA a "foreign terrorist organization," or FTO, the sources said, though it is not clear if that option - which would severely isolate UNRWA financially - is still a serious consideration.

Any blanket move against the entire organization could throw refugee relief efforts into disarray and cripple UNRWA, which is already facing a funding crisis.

Reuters