Israel ban on UNRWA 'could cause catastrophe in Gaza' as attacks on hospitals continue

Israel on Monday notified the United Nations that it was formally withdrawing from a 1967 agreement allowing the UN Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA to operate in Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip, as the World Food Programme (WFP) warned that the situation in Gaza “could soon escalate into famine”.

Last week the Israeli Knesset passed a bill banning UNRWA and forbidding the government from working with it.

UNRWA is the main supplier of humanitarian aid – which is already severely restricted by Israel – to Gaza and there have been warnings that the Israeli ban could cause a catastrophe in the enclave.

A UNRWA spokesman said on Monday that Israel's ban on its operations would lead to the "collapse" of humanitarian work in the war-torn Gaza Strip.

"If this law is implemented, it would be likely to cause the collapse of the international humanitarian operation in the Gaza Strip - an operation of which UNRWA is the backbone," Jonathan Fowler told AFP after Israel formally told the United Nations it was cancelling its ties with the agency.

The WFP said that it could only reach 42 percent of the 1.1 million people who needed food assistance in October due to a lack of supplies and its inability to access the territory.

“North Gaza remains under siege since early October, with humanitarian agencies unable to reach people in need. Urgent international effort is required to allow the delivery of critical assistance and grant humanitarian agencies access to the area,” it said.

On Monday, the Civil Defence in the Gaza Strip said that over 100,000 Palestinians were trapped in the north of the Gaza Strip without food and medicine.

Israel has been furiously bombing northern Gaza, killing dozens of people every day for the past few weeks, in an attempt to separate the area from the rest of the Gaza Strip and clear it of its current inhabitants.

Attacks on hospitals continue

The Palestinian official news agency WAFA reported that a number of people were killed and injured on Monday as Israel bombed Beit Lahia in northern Gaza and the Al-Nusierat camp in central Gaza.

Several people were killed when Israel bombed two houses near the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia. Israeli forces also attacked the hospital itself on Monday, seriously wounding one child and damaging the nursery there. Israeli forces reportedly fired on the Indonesian Hospital nearby, too.

Mahmoud Bassal, a spokesman for the Gaza Civil Defence, said that 60 percent of the inhabitants of northern Gaza were women and children.

"There is no medical treatment in northern Gaza and unfortunately the world, which claims to uphold democracy, is leaving Gaza to be slaughtered," he said.

On 23 October the Civil Defence announced that it had completely stopped its operations in northern Gaza after the Israeli military detained five of its members and deliberately targeted three others, while the only fire engine left in the area was also bombed.

The Gaza health ministry previously called on the international community and humanitarian organisations to send medical teams to northern Gaza, particularly to the Kamal Adwan Hospital.

The Gaza government media office said on Monday that all hospitals in northern Gaza were out of service, adding that 1,800 people were killed and 4,000 wounded in the area in the past month.

Also on Monday, doctors at Kamal Adwan said that the only survivor of a previous attack on the hospital’s intensive care unit was a four-day-old baby. Several children were killed in the attack, while medics struggled to keep other patients alive amid a lack of electricity and medical supplies.

The baby’s family were all killed and his life hangs in the balance due to the Israeli military attack destroying the oxygen station he was using, according to Al-Jazeera.

In the United States, Democrat presidential candidate Kamala Harris said that she would “do everything in my power to end the war in Gaza” if she wins elections on Tuesday amid continued scepticism and anger from Arab-Americans in Michigan, a key swing state.