BRUSSELS — The destruction caused by a month of intense fighting in Gaza is unprecedented, a senior official at the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees told POLITICO, as it seeks nearly $500 million in emergency funding to care for 730,000 people who have been driven from their homes.
“It’s the scale, the intensity and the speed at which everything is unraveling that is unprecedented here,” Natalie Boucly of UNRWA said in an interview on a visit to Brussels to meet EU lawmakers and officials.
UNRWA — the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East — provides food, shelter and medical services in the Gaza Strip.
The massive military onslaught launched by the Israeli armed forces in response to the October 7 attacks by Hamas militants has made the agency’s work extremely difficult — and lethally dangerous.
Ninety-two U.N. workers have been killed and at least 26 injured in Gaza since the start of hostilities. The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry puts the overall civilian toll at more than 10,000.
The level of destruction of one month’s fighting in Gaza is comparable to that of four years of fighting in the Syrian civil war, said Boucly, citing initial findings in a United Nations Development Program (UNDP) report on the socio-economic impact of the war that is due to be published later on Thursday.
Cut off
Israel has limited all access to food, water and fuel in the Gaza Strip — which is controlled by Hamas and home to 2.3 million people — in retaliation for the raid in which the militant group killed more than 1,400 people and took over 200 hostage.
“What Gaza needs, in the most urgent and pressing way, is a humanitarian cease-fire,” Boucly said, so that aid in the form of food and medicines can be brought in.
However, the cease-fire must be “realistic” to provide an uninterrupted flow of aid — meaning it should last several days. And it should be quickly followed by a political solution for the conflict.
“There are humanitarian corridors opened by Israel at the moment between the North and the South of Gaza,” she explained, but “they are not the solution.”
According to Boucly, who is UNRWA’s acting deputy commissioner-general, the existing pauses are supposed to last for hours. But they are often shorter.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told American broadcaster ABC News on Tuesday that “there’ll be no cease-fire, general cease-fire, in Gaza without the release of our hostages.”
“As far as tactical little pauses — an hour here, an hour there — we’ve had them before,” the prime minister added.
But for Boucly, a tactical pause or “whatever you call it … it’s got to be sufficient to allow enough aid coming in … but also to give a chance to people in the small businesses to pick up again and to produce food.”
Fuel first
“No fuel has come in through the Rafah crossing [between Gaza and Egypt] since the beginning of the war,” said Boucly.
Without it, she explained, Gaza can’t operate desalination plants, produce bread in bakeries, or power its hospitals.
“There’s only so much you can do when you have the flour, but you can’t turn it into bread, because the water is not there,” she added.
In addition, the overall situation with food is “dire,” according to her colleagues on the ground.
While shops are empty or not operating, “there’s only one infrastructure that’s getting fuller and fuller,” she said, “the morgues.”
Flash appeal
Meanwhile, heads of state and foreign affairs ministers are gathering in Paris to attend a peace forum hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron.
The assembly — bringing together leaders, diplomats and NGO workers from across the world — will discuss “concrete ways” to improve access to humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip and answer the population’s need for water, food, medicine and fuel, according to an aide to Macron.
UNRWA is raising its fundraising target in a flash appeal for Gaza to $481 million, up from the $104 million it sought at the start of the war, to address the escalating refugee crisis.
“Our initial flash appeal was based on a number of displaced people of 200,000, and by now we have nearly 730,000 in our facilities,” said Boucly, explaining the need for additional funding.
