Gaza: ‘People losing hope’ as aid access is refused to north, warns UNRWA

This article is published in association with United Nations.

Dead bodies are lying in the streets of besieged northern Gaza while hospitals run out of blood packs – a situation that’s “nothing short of catastrophic”, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said on Tuesday.

Briefing reporters in Geneva from central Gaza, UNRWA senior emergency officer Louise Wateridge warned that amid looming famine in the Gaza Strip and as winter approaches, those forcibly displaced are sleeping on the floor in makeshift shelters surrounded by sewage.

“We are extremely concerned when the rains come to the Gaza Strip, what will happen to 500,000 people who are in areas of flooding?” she said.

Ms. Wateridge stressed that the volume of aid currently entering the war-torn enclave is “the lowest in months”, with an average in October of only 37 trucks per day for the entire 2.2 million population.

According to UNRWA, this represents only around six per cent of the commercial and humanitarian supplies allowed in before the war.

US aid deadline expiring

Asked about a Tuesday deadline set last month by the United States for Israel to improve the aid situation in the enclave by 12 November, the UNRWA official said that instead, “aid supplies have lessened”.

The UN continues to be denied access to northern Gaza where people are “begging for pieces of bread, for water”, Ms. Wateridge said, noting that 1.7 million people in the enclave – a full 80 per cent of the population – did not receive their food rations in October.

Last Friday, food security experts from the UN-partnered Integrated Phase Classification (IPC) Famine Review Committee issued an alert over imminent famine in areas within the northern Gaza Strip.

As suffering continues to worsen, “people are losing hope”, Ms. Wateridge said.

Just this week, two missions to northern Gaza which she was due to take part in were denied; the aim had been to deliver chlorine tablets and assess the facilities for those sheltering.

“No one from UNRWA has been able to access the besieged north in over a month,” she insisted.

Every hour counts

The UNRWA official spoke of “pleas and testimonies” from UN colleagues and from doctors in the hospitals in the north, which have been bombed. “The doctors inform us that they have run out of blood supplies. They have run out of medicine… There are bodies in the streets,” she said, adding that ambulances have “stopped functioning” and that people can only get to hospital by themselves, on donkey carts.

“Colleagues are trapped in residential buildings,” unable to leave, Ms. Wateridge said, while the eight UNRWA-run water wells in northern Gaza’s Jabalia have all ceased operations, leaving people without clean water.

The UNRWA senior emergency officer reiterated the agency’s call to the Israeli authorities for access to the besieged areas, which is “more and more critical each hour now”.

Only a ceasefire will end the suffering

Late last month, the Israeli Parliament voted to ban UNRWA from operating in the country and prohibit officials from having any contact with the agency. The laws are set to come into force 90 days from their adoption.

Asked about any message that UNRWA may have for Hamas, Ms. Wateridge said: “Our call for Hamas as well as the Israeli forces is a ceasefire.” She underscored that the Palestinian militant group initiated “horrific attacks against Israeli civilians on 7 October”, adding that it was unacceptable that the war continued and civilians suffered.

“We have seen horrific suffering of Israeli civilians, the 7 October attacks, followed by horrific suffering of civilians in the Gaza Strip. There needs to be a ceasefire, a release and return of the hostages home and finally some respite to all the civilians, not just in the Gaza Strip, but the surrounding region,” she concluded.