Fatal blow: Suspension of aid to UNRWA aims to starve Gazans to death

Once Israel claimed that some employees of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) were allegedly involved in the Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023, the United States and several Western countries suspended their humanitarian aid to the international agency for more than 2 million Palestinian people in the besieged Gaza Strip, accelerating the annihilation of the Gazans.

The UNRWA announced on January 26 that Israel has provided it with allegations claiming that several employees were allegedly involved in the October 7 attacks, adding that it decided to terminate the contracts with those employees to “protect the Agency’s ability to deliver humanitarian assistance” and launched an investigation into the Israeli allegations. However, the “immediate” termination of the contracts – even before the end of the investigations – did not prevent major donors from banning their aid to the international relief body. 

The United States was the first country to suspend the aid ($40.4 million pledged in 2023), followed by the UK, Canada, Australia, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Finland, Iceland, and Japan. Meanwhile, other countries like Norway and Spain said they would continue sending funds to the organization. Despite UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ appeal to the donors to continue their funding, many countries decided to continue their suspension of funding.

A UNRWA spokesman announced that if the funding doesn’t resume, the agency will not be able to provide its service in the region, including in Gaza, beyond the end of February, Al Jazeera reported.

The UNRWA was established by a UN General Assembly (UNGA) resolution on December 8, 1949, following the 1948 war between the Arabs and Israel, to provide direct relief and employment programs for Palestine refugees inside the Palestinian occupied territories, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria.

In just one week, from January 21 to 27, the organization distributed flour to a total of 323,482 families outside shelters in the middle and southern areas of the Gaza Strip, according to the latest data from UNRWA, which has a staff of 28,000 Palestinians, including 152 workers killed by Israel’s non-stop shelling. The agency is vital in providing millions of other basic commodities and lifesaving aid to internally displaced people, including water, medicines and medical supplies, cans of protein-based food, and diary items, in addition to mattresses, hygiene kits, diapers, and blankets.

The absence of aid from UNRWA only increases the magnitude of suffering the Palestinians are experiencing, amid the minimal delivery of humanitarian aid trucks to the Gaza Strip through the Rafah Broder crossing. Before the war, about 500 humanitarian aid trucks were entering Gaza daily, while only 7,179 trucks entered since the war started until January 26, according to the Egyptian Red Crescent, meaning an average of only about 65 trucks per day, most of which did not reach the entire strip, especially in the northern parts.

Speaking to Jusoor Post, Ramy Abdu, president of the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, said the issue of humanitarian aid is a huge problem, with a large number of people facing acute starvation. “I say more than 70% of the strip’s population is facing acute starvation, especially those who are in the north of the strip, where no humanitarian aid has entered for a long time.”

The amount of aid that entered following the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) ruling against Israel has been less than the number of aid trucks that were entering before the court ruling was delivered, he added. The ICJ, the highest international human rights court in the world, ordered on January 26 that Israel must prevent its genocidal acts against the Palestinians and ensure the delivery of humanitarian aid.

“Israel is committing severe atrocities by using starvation [as a weapon] to press on the population for achieving political gains and deporting the people,” Abdu said.

“The situation in northern Gaza is very dangerous. We monitored several diseases due to starvation, like skin rashes and diarrhea, besides a number of heart attacks. We also monitored several deaths of infants as a result of starvation and dehydration,” he continued.

“Additionally, there is a deliberate Israeli disruption by bombing thousands of Palestinians trying to move from the north of Gaza to the nearest point in the south to receive aid, but when the aid arrives, Israel bombs and targets thousands of the displaced people who receive the aid. We have also documented the killing of dozens of those people, whose blood mixed with food and flour. Some families can have only one meal in two days,” he said.

Appeals to continue lifesaving aid

The Norwegian Refugee Council, in a joined statement signed by 21 human rights organizations, expressed their shock at “the reckless decision to cut a lifeline for an entire population by some of the very countries that had called for aid in Gaza to be stepped up and for humanitarians to be protected while doing their job.”

“UNWRA cuts will have [a] devastating effect on Palestinians already in humanitarian freefall,” Norwegian Refugee Council Secretary General Jan Egeland told CNN on January 30.

Former Egyptian Vice President Mohamed El Baradie said that suspension of funds to the UNRWA is an “irrational decision” and “means nothing but collective punishment, death and destruction for the Palestinian people.” On his X account, he also called upon Arab countries to support UNRWA financially and politically.

Israeli historian Avi Shlaim accused Israel of bringing discredit on the ICJ by this attack on the UNRWA, saying, “It’s not a coincidence that the attacks on UNRWA. Israel is trying to discredit the International Court of Justice after the ICJ ruling.”

Previous attacks on UNRWA

However, this was not the first suspension of aid to the UNRWA. In 2018, the US administration, under former President Donald Trump, suspended its aid to the agency. “The United States will no longer commit further funding to this irredeemably flawed operation,” announced the White House in a statement in September 2018. The move was welcomed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at that time. One year later, both Switzerland and the Netherlands suspended their funding to the UNRWA over ethnic misconduct inside the agency, Al Jazeera reported.

Back in 2014, Netanyahu claimed in a press conference that one of the UNRWA’s schools was used by Hamas to fire rockets against Israel.