In Gaza, humanitarian network is in crisis even as needs soar

In a makeshift tent in Rafah, Habiba Abu Bazazo uses kindling to boil wheat for her family’s meal in a tiny borrowed skillet.

The family’s consumption is down from three square meals a day to a single meal of two ingredients – if they’re lucky.

“We are being crushed by the weight of scarcity,” the mother of four says. “Every meal needs a budget.”

The complex military, political, and logistical challenges to getting food, temporary shelter, and medical supplies into the Gaza Strip are leaving the vast majority of Palestinians competing for scarce resources with little cash in a wartime economy.

Now there’s a new, urgent obstacle: the defunding of UNRWA, the facilitator and distributor of more than 50% of aid in Gaza.

Several donor nations pulled their funding of the United Nations’ Palestinian relief organization in the past week after Israeli intelligence alleged that 12 of UNRWA’s 13,000-member Gaza staff were involved in Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack.

U.N. officials say the defunding will have a “devastating impact,” and UNRWA opened an investigation and terminated the employment of nine of the 12 accused; the other three employees are dead or missing.

The agency is set to shut down operations in Gaza and across the region by the end of this month, UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini warned Thursday.

“Shutting down UNRWA will dramatically compromise the humanitarian response immediately,” warns Andrea De Domenico, head of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the occupied territories, which directs the U.N. and non-U.N. Gaza aid response.

Backbone of aid response

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East was founded to aid Palestinian refugees after the 1948 war that followed the creation of Israel. It provides health, education, and housing to some 5 million Palestinians in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and the occupied territories.

It plays a huge role in Gaza. As of this week, UNRWA facilities house more than 1.2 million displaced Palestinians across the narrow coastal strip, over half of Gaza’s population. It distributes flour, canned food, and basic hygiene kits for the entire population of 2.2 million.

The agency, reliant on voluntary donations from U.N. member states, is also a main provider of water. It runs desalination plants and seven wells, and has delivered 20 million liters of drinking water since the Israel-Hamas war’s start. It currently is the sole agency bringing Gaza fuel, which it distributes to other humanitarian agencies, desalination plants, and medical facilities.

Critically, the U.N. and international humanitarian organizations rely on UNRWA warehouses, logistical networks, and staff to get aid to displaced families throughout the besieged strip.

Nine Western nations led by the United States, UNRWA’s largest single donor, have announced they had suspended further contributions, which would deprive the agency of $440 million of its $1.2 billion budget. The U.S. State Department said it would not complete its annual $300 million-$400 million contribution, of which $121 million had already been paid.

On Wednesday U.N. agencies and other international organizations warned that the funding suspensions “will have catastrophic consequences for the 2.2 million people of Gaza.”

“UNRWA will not be able to purchase the food, hygiene, and medicines we are currently buying or have the personnel” to distribute it, says Juliette Touma, UNRWA director of communications.

According to the humanitarian affairs office, it will take “weeks” to figure out logistics to replace UNRWA, a process which could grind an already beleaguered aid response to a halt.

The U.N. is currently struggling to get aid beyond Rafah, with limited fuel, communications, and Israeli movement restrictions that have at times blocked convoys and require cargo to be loaded and unloaded from trucks several times before reaching it destination.

Under the current conditions, the international community can barely get more than 200 aid trucks a day into Gaza.

Not only does this restrict organizations’ ability to reach affected areas, “but also the affected population’s ability to access assistance,” Mr. De Domenico says.

“It is not just a question of how many trucks,” he says of the logistical challenges. “The entire machinery of the response is being affected.”

Impact of fighting

Meanwhile, intense fighting this week in Khan Yunis, which emptied an UNRWA center hosting 43,000 evacuees, pushed tens of thousands more people into Rafah, what U.N. officials describe as a “gigantic human wave.”

Tents are crammed all the way to the southwestern edge of the strip, pushed up against the Egyptian border.

Families scramble for makeshift tents as heavy rains and cold temperatures hit the coastal enclave; winter clothes are an urgent need; children walk around Rafah and central Gaza barefoot, in shorts and T-shirts.

Palestinians in Gaza are forced to rely on money wired from relatives to buy what scarce supplies are left in markets. A pack of biscuits that went for $0.15 now sells for $2; a $1 kilogram of onions commands $13.

Most families, without wood or access to a space to cook, need cash to pay entrepreneurial women to bake their flour and children to grind their grain.

In Gaza, if a family wants to eat, they have to pay.

In Rafah, men and women wait in separate milelong lines that converge at the Barasi International Currency Exchange, one of the two last functioning exchanges in Gaza that can receive money wires.

“I need a miracle”

Ms. Abu Bazazo, the displaced mother of four, made her fourth attempt in a week to retrieve a transfer from her family in Jordan, pending for 20 days.

She secured her place in line after dawn prayers at 5:30 a.m.; at 9 she had barely moved.

“I recognize many of the women standing alongside me from yesterday and the day before,” she says. “There was no internet for seven days. ... I need a miracle.”

Hours later, the exchange owner announced there was no cash available.

“I have to go home empty-handed,” Ms. Abu Bazazoi says with a sigh. “My children asked me for food.”

U.N. staff say some people in Gaza are selling the limited food aid they receive to buy medical supplies, winter clothes, or materials to build their own tents.

At a makeshift gold stand on a Rafah street, women sell the last of their jewelry and wedding dowries for cash to feed their families.

Among them is Asma, who declined to give her last name. She waits for the “jeweler” to weigh gold bracelets she was desperate to sell – at a discount – because “there is no sign of this war ending.”

“I had saved these bracelets to invest in my children’s future,” Asma says, “but now I am selling them for food.”