Philippe Lazzarini, the director of UNRWA, the United Nations agency that provides humanitarian assistance to Palestinian refugees, he said that Israel announced it would stop approving the agency’s food shipments to the northern Gaza Strip. UNRWA has been providing humanitarian assistance to Palestinian people since 1949: its current activity is fundamental inside the Strip, where Israeli bombings have caused a serious humanitarian crisis. The situation is particularly critical in the north: there deliveries of humanitarian aid are much less frequent than in the south, where they continue to arrive via the Rafah crossing on the border with Egypt, albeit irregularly and amidst enormous difficulties.
Lazzarini called Israel’s decision “scandalous,” called for the restrictions to be lifted and said that preventing UNRWA from doing its work in the Strip will lead to “many more dying of starvation, dehydration and lack of shelter.” Meanwhile, World Health Organization director Tedros Adhanom commented that “all efforts to deliver food should not only be allowed, but there should be an immediate acceleration of deliveries.”
In January, Israel accused some UNRWA employees of having participated in the Hamas attacks on 7 October against Israeli civilians: the accusations concern around ten employees, out of a total of 13,000 of the agency in Gaza. Following these accusations, some Western countries had suspended their funding to the agency (although many of these subsequently restored them), while Israel, which has always had a rather conflictual relationship with UNRWA, has made progressively more complicated his work in Gaza.
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