UN ‘collaborated with Hamas,’ had ‘monopolistic’ aid oversight: senior US official
The United Nations, which “has never had a competitor,” collaborated with Hamas and had several staffers who participated in the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, a senior U.S. State Department official told reporters on Tuesday.
Palestinians receive food aid from the World Food Program in cooperation with the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip, on Feb. 19, 2025. Photo by Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90.
“They’ve had a monopolistic, sort of non-competitive hold over these sorts of areas,” the official said.
The United Nations “is unhappy that we’re making them compete now in areas of the world,” the official said. “The U.N. has an institutional interest to lie, as they have repeatedly, about these things.”
The global body tends to ignore violence at U.N. aid sites, according to the official, who told reporters that there has been “a lot of aid diversion to Hamas.”
“They never want to talk about that,” the official said.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which the United Nations has denounced and said cannot replace its own efforts to deliver aid, recently stated that it has delivered 50 million meals to Gazans. The State Department said that it will give $30 million to the foundation for its work.
“We will continue to work with them to ensure that security is handled appropriately at those sites, and that they can deliver as many meals as possible,” the U.S. official told reporters.
The official spoke with reporters as the State Department is set to officially absorb the U.S. government’s foreign aid administrator. As of Tuesday, foreign aid decisions are being held through a new Foggy Bottom mechanism after the Trump administration shuttered the U.S. Agency for International Development, amid criticism of waste and abuse at the latter.
“We gave them a small infusion of cash,” the U.S. official said of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
“We continue to see how it’s performing, and if and when they continue to deliver, and if they do that safely and securely and consistent with the principles that we’ve laid out for them, then we’re happy to invest more in them,” the official said.
The alternatives to supporting the foundation are not providing any aid or supporting the United Nations, “which is in league with Hamas, unable to secure its own sites and has failed to serve the people of Gaza for decades,” per the official.
The official referred reporters with questions about violence at or near foundation distribution sites to the Israeli embassy in Washington and “folks that are closer to the ground” in Gaza.
Reports of massacres at foundation sites are “untrue or uncorroborated,” according to the U.S. official. “The GHF is not responsible for any of that violence.”
Given its new funding from the U.S. government, the foundation will have “an obligation to submit to us extensive financial reports, operational details, to answer questions about these sort of issues,” per the official.
“They’re in very close contact with the folks on the ground,” the official said.
The State Department will be looking for delivery of meals at scale “in a way that is not funding Hamas, and we continue to work with them on ensuring that they have an adequate security posture,” the official added. “We think that GHF itself is doing an excellent job on that.”
