GAZA STRIP/ISTANBUL — In northern Gaza, families are still fleeing what is left of their homes.
“They told us to leave immediately,” said one woman, who stopped briefly to tell a VOA cameraman what is going on.
Families behind her streamed down the bombed-out street, carrying belongings in backpacks and plastic sacks, and other items, such as pans and buckets, in their hands.
“We have nothing else to lose. We lost our children. We lost everything,” she said, as a male family member urged her to keep moving.
The United Nations said the Israeli military is “subjecting an entire population to bombing, siege and risk of starvation.”
And in the next two months, the situation could get immeasurably worse, added Roger Hearn, director of relief and social services for UNRWA, the U.N.’s agency for Palestinian refugees. Over the objections of much of the international community, Israeli laws that would essentially halt UNRWA operations in the Gaza Strip are expected to take effect in late January.
“People are facing catastrophic hunger in Gaza,” said Hearn in a phone interview from an airport on his way home from Gaza. “People are struggling to get the basics, such as water. Most people in Gaza are displaced. … So, to actually take that one step further and say, ‘OK, UNRWA is forbidden from working in Gaza,’ would be a very cruel addition to a situation where people are already in dire need.”
Israel accuses UNRWA of having Hamas members among its staff in Gaza, including participants of the October 7, 2023, terror attack that sparked the war when Hamas-led militants killed about 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped more than 250 others.
The United States, Britain and other Western countries designate Hamas as a terror group.
In a letter to the U.N. early this month, Israel withdrew from the 1967 agreement recognizing UNRWA, according to The Times of Israel.
“UNRWA — the organization whose employees participated in the October 7th massacre and many of whose employees are Hamas operatives — is part of the problem in the Gaza Strip and not part of the solution,” said Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz, according to the news site.
And while UNRWA disputes these allegations, Hearn said the most urgent issue on their agenda is trying to convince Israel not to implement the new laws. People in Gaza are now starving, even as trucks containing enough food to feed the Strip for months languish across the border in Egypt.
Aid that gets in is hard to distribute amid ongoing battles, bombings and looting.
Aid workers in Gaza say they still have hope that the laws will not go into force.
“We hope that the active parties in the international community will intervene and prevent this disaster,” said Abu Sharaf Jadallah, a local leader and relief worker who helps distribute UNRWA aid in Gaza. “It is the only party now that is providing aid to all Palestinians, to 2 million displaced people.”
Long-term losses
Further south, in Khan Younis and Deir Albalah, Gaza, where conditions for displaced families are marginally better than in the north, humanitarian aid is not nearly enough to feed the people.
They are malnourished and increasingly sick. Soon, many also may face starvation.
Families here say they fear that if UNRWA stops working in Gaza, they will have even less access to food and clean water. However, the long-term consequences of an UNRWA ban could be even more devastating, they say.
Before the current war, UNRWA was providing education for 350,000 children in Gaza. Palestinians in general, and Gaza specifically, have one of the world’s highest literacy rates. But that status is already in jeopardy as children here face a second year without classes.
UNRWA schools now mostly serve as crowded and undersupplied emergency shelters. But locals say that to cripple the future education system at this time would be a massive blow.
“It will be a terrible thing,” said Rasheed Abu Eida, a 50-year-old father of six. “A country deprived of education.”
Now, his children are just trying to survive, he said. Besides trauma from constant bombings, they have suffered from severe weight loss and other illnesses.
“My children are destroyed,” Eida said.
New law controversy
The international community has widely objected to the laws, with U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres saying, “It would be a catastrophe in what is already an unmitigated disaster.”
The laws were approved by Israel’s parliament in late October and would bar UNRWA from operating in Israel, which controls all access to Gaza, and curtail the agency’s activities inside the Strip.
Israel has said that more than 10% of the UNRWA staff of about 13,000 people in Gaza has ties to Hamas, and that 12 employees participated in the October 7 attack.
UNRWA has fired nine employees in response to these allegations and says it has seen no evidence to support the claim that more than 1,400 other staff members have ties to Hamas.
Israel says other organizations and U.N. agencies can take up the work of UNRWA, but the U.N. says it would be virtually impossible to replace UNRWA’s complex systems on the ground during war time.
Locals say the potential loss of the organization, which has been helping Palestinians since 1950, is unthinkable. The organization serves Palestinian communities in Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan.
“A ban on UNRWA would mean no care for refugees,” said Fatma Alzahraa Sharqawy, a displaced mother of four. “And not only the refugees who left their villages and cities in the past, but all of Palestine. So, if the United Nations and UNRWA is banned, it means the international community has abandoned the Palestinian cause.”
Said Kilany contributed to this report.
