In Gaza, humanitarian network is in crisis even as needs soar
Ghada Abdulfattah and Taylor Luck
RAFAH, GAZA STRIP; AND AMMAN, JORDAN- 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.
The UNRWA crisis comes as the struggling aid response is forcing Palestinians in Gaza to sell whatever possessions they have left to buy scarce items in a war-time economy.
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.
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