Looting deepens Gaza misery as famine looms, says UNRWA official

A humanitarian disaster in Gaza is being deepened by a total breakdown in law and order and the conflict between Israel and Hamas is rendering the enclave uninhabitable, a senior official of the main UN aid agency there, UNRWA, says.

UNRWA official Natalie Boucly also says arrest warrants issued against senior Israeli politicians as well as a leader of Hamas by an international tribunal meant there would be a reckoning for the suffering inflicted on millions.

“Basically, the entire population of Gaza is in desperate need of assistance amid a looming famine,” says Boucly, UNRWA’s deputy commissioner-general.

Israel has rejected global food security experts’ warning of famine, saying it has allowed sufficient aid into Gaza to prevent it.

Israel’s parliament passed a law last month that will ban UNRWA from operating in the country when it takes effect in late January. UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini has said its implementation “will have catastrophic consequences.”

Speaking at a conference in Cyprus, Boucly says 500 trucks of pre-war aid entering the Palestinian enclave daily had now fallen to 37, with those supplies now at risk of looting by criminal gangs.

Nearly 100 trucks carrying food for Palestinians were violently looted on November 16 after entering Gaza in one of the worst aid losses during 13 months of war in the enclave.

“Gaza has become uninhabitable,” she says, calling the situation a failure of humanity.

“There has to be accountability for all the grave violations of international law that are occurring. The issuance of the ICC arrest warrants yesterday against three individuals is the start of that accountability,” she says.