The lives of millions of Palestinians are at risk as the UN has been forced to suspend its operations across all of Gaza after Israel’s mass evacuation orders and violence has made it nearly impossible for humanitarian groups to distribute or even access aid.
The UN’s aid operations “ground to a halt” on Monday after the latest round of evacuations of Deir el-Balah, Reuters reported, citing an anonymous senior UN official. This is the first time that the UN has been forced to suspend all operations across Gaza due to Israel’s genocide.
“We’re unable to deliver today with the conditions that we’re in,” the official said. “We’re trying to balance the need of the population with the need for safety and security of the UN personnel.”
The official stressed that the UN is still committed to staying in Gaza, but that doing so is becoming more and more difficult. The UN’s main operations were in Deir el-Balah and personnel have been forced to leave equipment behind as a result of Israel’s forced evacuation and ground assault, which has already commenced.
In recent days, UN groups and other aid organizations have been warning that Israel’s latest evacuation orders have created an impossible situation for Palestinians in Gaza and the humanitarian groups acting as one of Palestinians’ last lifelines there. Israel’s designated “safe zone” — that the Israeli military has attacked many times — is packed with tents, with families erecting shelters all the way up to the shoreline.
Because of how crowded the area is, and because parts of the main aid route are now what Israel has dubbed the “combat zone,” humanitarian groups say that it takes hours to move just a few miles.
Groups say requests to Israeli forces to allow for safe humanitarian movement go ignored for weeks, even as the situation on the ground changes daily; and groups have reported being targeted by Israeli forces even if they are given permission to travel safely. Israel is killing a record number of aid workers and has killed over 200 UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) workers in Gaza just since October; in all, the Israeli military has killed 280 aid workers amid its genocide.
“Where do we move now? … The challenge is to find a place where we can reset and effectively operate,” the UN official said to Reuters. “The space to operate is being restricted more and more than ever.”
UNRWA Director of Planning Sam Rose also echoed the space concerns in a press conference on Monday. “The space and the ability of the UN system, the humanitarian system, to operate in Gaza is becoming increasingly difficult — is becoming increasingly constrained,” Rose said.
UNRWA spokesperson Louise Wateridge added that Israel has issued 16 displacement orders in the past month alone, with five of them issued just between August 19 and 24. This means that the agency, which delivers and coordinates aid across Gaza, and other aid groups have lost access to water wells, warehouses, distribution centers, health centers and other facilities countless times. Multiple times this month, Wateridge said, aid groups have had to evacuate facilities and move equipment due to Israel’s orders.
The UN provides a wide swath of crucial services in Gaza, providing food, medical supplies, health care services, shelter, and more. Though it’s unclear how long the UN suspension will last, even just a temporary halt could be disastrous amid the famine and health crisis.
Israel boasted on Sunday that it has allowed polio vaccine vials to enter Gaza after creating conditions for a polio epidemic in the Gaza Strip. However, the suspension of UN services will mean that most or all of these vaccines won’t actually be able to reach the population.
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