UNRWA’s communications director Juliette Touma described catastrophic scenes at the camp, where some 100 buildings had been “destroyed or heavily damaged” by the detonations at the weekend.
Truce opportunity
The first phase of the temporary truce between Israel and Hamas followed more than 15 months of war which in which some 46,000 Palestinians were killed, according to the Gaza health authorities. The conflict was sparked by the 7 October 2023 Hamas-led attacks on Israel, in which some 1,200 people were killed and 250 were taken hostage.
Ms. Touma stressed that UNRWA has brought in 60 per cent of all supplies that came into Gaza since the ceasefire began and that the “vast majority” of the aid is distributed by the agency which has more than 5,000 staff there. A fifth of them are health workers, Ms. Touma added, underscoring UNRWA’s major role as a primary healthcare provider in the enclave, offering an average of 17,000 daily consultations.
Following the Knesset ban, UN chief António Guterres and the heads of many UN agencies insisted that UNRWA is irreplaceable in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
Besides obstacles stemming from the new Israeli legislation, the agency’s operations are also constantly in jeopardy because of its “very bad” financial health, Ms. Touma said. The United States, notably, had stopped funding UNRWA as of January 2024.
The UNRWA spokesperson said that the agency was able to pay salaries to its workers last month but had limited visibility over its financial situation, calling the funding crisis “endemic”.