“It’s absolutely critical to unlock the congestion…at crossing points and to reopen critical lifelines like the Jordan corridor,” said Juliette Touma, Director of Communications at UNOPS, the United Nations Office for Project Services. 

Briefing journalists, Ms. Touma highlighted that although the 3 October ceasefire agreement had brought some respite to families, “people continue to be killed, day in, day out”.

She said that Gaza’s highly vulnerable people simply “cannot wait” for a reconstruction plan to take shape – one of the stated aims of the US-led Board of Peace. “They need supplies at the same time, it’s not just the services,” she stressed.

UNRWA commitment

Echoing those concerns, the UN agency for Palestinians, UNRWA, underscored its key and longstanding role in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, including Gaza. This mission was entrusted to UNRWA by UN Member States at the global body’s General Assembly in December 1949.

“We are the largest United Nations agency operating in the Gaza Strip,” said Jonathan Fowler, UNRWA Senior Communications Manager. “We must be able to continue doing our work; that’s crystal clear.”

Board of Peace

While it has yet to be made clear exactly how the UN will support Board of Peace launched by President Trump at Davos on Thursday, last November’s Security Council resolution 2803 that welcomed its creation highlighted the importance of working with “cooperating organizations” including the United Nations.

“We are very strongly committed to do whatever we can to ensure the full implementation of Security Council Resolution 2803,” said Alessandra Vellucci, Director, UN Information Service, Geneva. “There is a role for the UN there about the UN leading on humanitarian aid delivery, which we have been doing for such a long time and we will continue to do the best of our capacities.”

Since Sunday, humanitarian partners providing emergency shelter assistance have reached over 13,000 households in Gaza, distributing hundreds of tents and thousands of tarpaulins, aid coordination office, OCHA, said in its latest update.

Gaza distribution obstacles remain

The UN office noted that “capacity and funding constraints” have limited support to only around 40 per cent of the existing 970 displacement sites across the Strip. 

Healthcare needs remain enormous across Gaza, too, where providers such as UNRWA try to help around 15,000 patients a day, despite numerous challenges.

“We had 22 clinics operating across the Gaza Strip before the start of the war, we’re now down to half a dozen,” said Mr. Fowler. “And we have mobile health teams that operate, but in incredibly complicated circumstances.”

A number of UNRWA facilities are located behind the so-called Yellow Line – a series of concrete blocks installed by the Israeli authorities which separates Gazans from the Israel Defense Forces – envisaged in the three-step Gaza peace plan.

“That makes it incredibly difficult to do our work and so many of our locations have been heavily damaged or indeed completely destroyed,” Mr. Fowler continued. “On top of that, we remain banned by the Israeli authorities from bringing in any of our own supplies.”

UNRWA premises ‘stormed’

Turning to the destruction of UNRWA’s headquarters in East Jerusalem on Tuesday, Mr. Fowler described how visiting diplomats had been caught up in the dramatic events when Israeli forces “stormed and demolished” buildings in the compound and fired tear gas. “This is a United Nations compound, so this is an attack on the United Nations,” he told journalists. 

Training centre threat

Highlighting concerns that the UNRWA-supported Kalandia Training Centre could be shut down “within days”, Mr. Fowler explained that it principally helped lower-income families to earn the skills they needed to earn a living: “If the centre were to be forcibly closed – and we do fear that this could happen within days – there is no educational alternative for these students.”

The UN agency remains deeply worried about developments in the occupied West Bank, one year since the Israeli forces launched operation Iron Wall.

“This led to the mass displacement of people from three camps in the north of the West Bank,” Mr. Fletcher explained, in reference to Jenin, Nur Shams and Tulkarem refugee settlements. 

Demographic shift

“The camps are progressively being demolished by the Israeli military. So therefore, changing the facts on the ground, changing the topography and the demography of these large communities,” Mr. Fowler insisted.