UNRWA delivers bulk of aid in Gaza, as destruction mounts in West Bank

Some 30,000 residents from Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank have fled their homes after large swathes of it were destroyed in a series of controlled detonations by the Israeli security forces (ISF), the UN agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) said.

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.

The camp’s residents had “endured the impossible”, she said, after nearly two months of “unceasing and escalating violence” linked to the Israeli military operation.

“The detonation on Sunday was when children were supposed to go back to school,” Ms. Touma explained, adding that the 13 UNRWA schools in the camp and its surrounding areas remain closed, depriving 5,000 children of education.

Israeli ban

UNRWA faces unprecedented challenges to continue carrying out its work following the Israeli parliament’s adoption in October last year of two laws banning its operations in Israeli territory and prohibiting Israeli authorities from having any contact with the agency. The Knesset laws entered into force last Thursday.

Still, Ms. Touma said that to this day, the Government of Israel has “not communicated to UNRWA how they intend to implement” the laws.

The agency’s teams are “staying and delivering” in the remaining parts of the West Bank, Ms. Touma said, with basic services, including primary healthcare and education ongoing.

“Schools and clinics remain open, including in occupied East Jerusalem, providing services to refugees,” the UNRWA spokesperson said. “We are seeing attendance at UNRWA schools at over 80 to 85 per cent.”

Ms. Touma also reported a “steady increase” in the number of patients visiting the UNRWA health centres in the West Bank, with one clinic in East Jerusalem recording more than 400 patients a day.

Turning to the Gaza Strip, where humanitarian needs are sky-high, Ms. Touma said that the “biggest priority” for UNRWA teams there is distributing supplies from 4,200 aid trucks that have entered the enclave since the start of the ceasefire on 19 January.

This is the target number that was set as part of the initial phase of the ceasefire and represents a welcome boost for the people of Gaza whose needs remain enormous – particularly among the hundreds of thousands of people who have returned to the shattered north.

More trucks are expected to arrive later this week, Ms. Touma said, adding that “hundreds of trucks” are waiting to enter Gaza from Egypt and Jordan.

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”.