Three American officials told Axios that State Department officials informed US President-elect Donald Trump’s administration team that a humanitarian “catastrophe” could occur in Gaza when the new Israeli law banning the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) comes into effect at the end of this month. .
The website also quoted UNRWA Communications Director Juliet Touma as confirming that the agency will not stop its operations by the end of this month when the Israeli embargo law comes into effect.
UNRWA said that it plans to remain in the Gaza Strip and work for as long as possible until it loses the ability to do so.
The Director of Communications at UNRWA added that it would be disastrous if the agency were banned with no alternative body to compensate for its activities.
“Death traps”
The Israeli Knesset finally approved a ban on UNRWA activity after the Israeli government claimed that employees working for the agency were part of the attacks on October 7, 2023.
The Israeli ban means that the agency will not be able to carry out its work in areas under Israeli control, including closing its offices and any bank accounts it has inside Israel.
In the same context, UNRWA said that Gaza’s hospitals, which are subjected to continuous Israeli bombing, have become “death traps.”
In a post on the X platform, published by the agency on Wednesday, it said that “families are disintegrating and children are dying from the cold” in Gaza due to Israeli attacks.
She pointed out that “hunger is claiming people’s lives” in the Gaza Strip, as the food crisis has worsened due to the restrictions imposed by Israel on the entry of humanitarian aid.
With American support, the Israeli genocide in Gaza resulted in more than 155,000 martyrs and wounded, most of them children and women, and more than 11,000 missing people, amid massive destruction and famine that killed dozens of children and the elderly, in one of the worst humanitarian disasters in the world.
