UN forced to halt aid operations in Gaza
UN aid operations in Gaza ground to a halt yesterday after Israel issued new evacuation orders on Sunday for Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, where the organisation’s operations centre was located, a senior UN official said.
The evacuation order came as the UN prepares to begin a campaign on Saturday to vaccinate an estimated 640,000 children in Gaza, where the World Health Organisation (WHO) said a 10-month-old baby had been paralysed by the type 2 polio virus, the first such case in the territory in 25 years.
“We’re unable to deliver today with the conditions that we’re in,” the senior UN official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “As of this morning, we’re not operating in Gaza.”
The UN had relocated its main operations centre for the Gaza Strip and most UN personnel to Deir Al-Balah, the official said, after Israel ordered the evacuation of Rafah in the south of Gaza several months ago.
“Where do we move now?” the official said, adding that UN staff had to be moved so quickly that equipment was left behind.
The Israeli military’s humanitarian unit, COGAT, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The senior UN official said staff on the ground had been directed to try to find a way to keep operating. He said operations had not been formally suspended.
“We’re not leaving because the people need us there,” the official said.
“We’re trying to balance the need of the population with the need for safety and security of the UN personnel.”
Sam Rose, a senior field director for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), said it was still managing to deliver health and other services yesterday, but noted that while UNRWA operated differently to the rest of the UN system, it still faced the same challenges.
“We are being squeezed into ever smaller areas of Gaza,” he said.
“The humanitarian zone declared by Israel has shrunk. It’s now about 11pc of the entire Gaza Strip. But this isn’t 11pc of land that is fit for habitation, fit for services, fit for life.”
Louise Wateridge, spokeswoman for UNRWA in Gaza, said yesterday: “The humanitarian response here is being completely strangled and limiting our ability of what we can do.”
The UN has long complained of obstacles to getting aid into Gaza – Israel inspects and approves all trucks – and says it is also struggling to distribute aid amid “total lawlessness” within the enclave of 2.3 million people.
The UN World Food Programme said yesterday that in the past two months it “managed to bring in only half of the 24,000 metric tonnes of food aid required for operations serving 1.1 million people”.
Mr Rose said more than 3,000 people would work on the polio vaccination campaign that was due to start on Saturday. “The vaccines have come in. We’re calling for calm. We’re calling for humanitarian pauses,” he said.