UNRWA stops aid delivery via key Gaza-Israel crossing

People dig channels to ease flooding at a camp for displaced Palestinians in al-Zaywayda in the central Gaza Strip on November 26, 2024, amid the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas. Agence France-Presse

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees has halted the delivery of aid through the key Kerem Shalom crossing between Israel and Gaza because of safety fears, its chief said Sunday.

“The road out of this crossing has not been safe for months. On 16 November, a large convoy of aid trucks was stolen by armed gangs,” UNRWA head Philippe Lazzarini posted on X.

“Yesterday, we tried to bring in a few food trucks on the same route. They were all taken,” he added, warning hunger was “rapidly deepening” in Gaza.

READ: Israel bans main UN Gaza aid agency

“The humanitarian operation has become unnecessarily impossible,” he said.

The United Nations said Friday that Gaza has descended into anarchy, with hunger soaring, looting rampant and rising numbers of rapes in shelters as public order falls apart.

Israel, which imposed a total siege of the Hamas-ruled territory after the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks, blames says that relief organizations cannot distribute large quantities of aid.

“Only 7 percent of the aid that came into the Gaza Strip in November was coordinated by UNRWA,” the Israeli defense ministry agency responsible for civilian affairs in the Palestinian territories, COGAT, said on X.

READ: What is UNRWA, Gaza’s main aid provider, accused of militant links?

“There are dozens of humanitarian organizations operating in the Gaza Strip that continue to take a growing role in delivering humanitarian aid,” it added.

During a press visit Thursday, the Israeli army showed aid shipments at the crossing and said they wait at the Gaza side of Kerem Shalom for “months”.

Ceasefire calls

Lazzarini also said Israel “must refrain from attacks on humanitarian workers”.

His demand follows an Israeli strike Saturday that killed three contractors of the US charity World Central Kitchen, including one who Israel’s military said was involved in October 7.

Save the Children later said a strike killed one of its staff members, the second employee to be killed since the war began last October.

Alexandra Saieh, head of humanitarian policy and advocacy for Save the Children, echoed Lazzarini’s demands. “We must see aid flow into Gaza safely and end to attacks on humanitarian workers,” she said.

The UN last month said 333 aid workers had been killed since the war began, including 243 UNRWA employees.

Lazzarini reiterated his call for a ceasefire “that would also secure the delivery of safe and uninterrupted aid to people in need”.

A summit of Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) leaders urged an “immediate and permanent cessation of Israeli fire and military operations” as well as “the delivery of all humanitarian and relief aid and basic needs to the residents of Gaza”.

German deputy foreign minister Tobias Linder also said Israel had no excuse for hampering aid delivery to Gaza before a conference in Cairo on the subject Monday.

‘Catastrophic’

“If aid supplies cannot come in through Kerem Shalom,… it will continue to be catastrophic for people,” Save the Children’s Saieh said.

She pointed to “the south and central areas where there are already rising levels of hunger, the risk of famine is getting worse by the day, and the onset of winter will bring with it the risk of more illness and disease”.

Claire Nicolet, head of mission for Doctors Without Borders, told AFP the situation was “catastrophic” and that UNRWA’s announcement was the “straw that broke the camel’s back” because the agency was “the backbone of aid for the supply of food and equipment”.

The Hamas attack in 2023 resulted in the deaths of 1,207 people in Israel, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

At least 44,429 Palestinians, a majority of them civilians, have been killed in Israel’s military campaign in the Gaza Strip since the war began, according to data provided by the health ministry in the territory.

The UN has acknowledged these figures to be reliable.