The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees has said it is suspending aid deliveries through the main crossing into Gaza because of lawlessness and violence, accusing Israel of failing to ensure safe conditions for aid workers to provide humanitarian assistance.
Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the agency, known as UNRWA, said in a statement on Sunday that it would stop sending aid through the crossing despite a deepening hunger crisis in Gaza because it had become “unnecessarily impossible” to do so safely.
“The road out of this crossing has not been safe for months,” Mr. Lazzarini said.
He said “political decisions” by Israel had limited the amount of aid getting into Gaza and also created a dangerous and chaotic environment for delivering the relatively few supplies that have entered through the crossing, Kerem Shalom.
Mr. Lazzarini said Israel had failed to provide safe passage on roads designated for use by aid trucks, and that Israel’s military had targeted local police officers, leading to a “breakdown of law and order.” Gaza’s police force answers to what remains of the Hamas-run government in the territory.
“The responsibility of protection of aid workers and supplies is with the State of Israel as the occupying power,” Mr. Lazzarini said. “They must ensure aid flows into Gaza safely and must refrain from attacks on humanitarian workers.”
Responding to the announcement, the Israeli military agency that oversees aid distribution in Gaza on Monday sought to downplay the impact of the suspension, saying that relief delivered by UNRWA made up just 7 percent of all the aid delivered in the territory in November.
The Israeli agency, known as COGAT, said more than 1,000 truckloads of aid was “collected from the various crossings and distributed throughout the Gaza Strip” in the last week.
“We will continue to work with the international community to increase the amount of aid making its way into Gaza,” the agency said in a statement.
Israel has frequently blamed U.N. agencies for not doing more to distribute aid in Gaza, and has accused UNRWA in particular of fomenting anti-Israel sentiment. In January, Israel accused a dozen of the agency’s employees of participating in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks that set off the war in Gaza, leading the agency to fire them. A U.N. investigation later found that Israel had not provided evidence to back up its claims that many UNRWA employees had ties to Hamas.
In October, Israel’s parliament passed two laws barring UNRWA operations in the country, a move that could create further logistical challenges for the agency’s work in Gaza. Those laws are set to go into effect early next year.
The decision to stop UNRWA aid shipments was made after armed gangs robbed a group of aid trucks that entered Gaza on Saturday, a hijacking that came after a larger convoy was looted at gunpoint on Nov. 16, Mr. Lazzarini said.
Louise Wateridge, a spokeswoman for UNRWA, said the southern part of the territory had seen “a huge increase in looting and in criminal activity in recent months.”
“Even when we are able to collect aid from the border, it never makes it to our warehouses in Khan Younis,” Ms. Wateridge said, referring to a city in southern Gaza that is a hub for relief distribution. “If you are lucky then some days you might come back with half a truck of supplies, but you started with anything from five trucks or 12 trucks or 100 trucks.”
She said the agency believed some of the looting was driven not by organized crime but by desperation among the more than two million Palestinians living in the territory.
Gaza has teetered on the edge of famine for almost a year. Israel, which controls Gaza’s borders, has imposed fluctuating restrictions on the entry of food, water, medicine and other goods since the war against Hamas began more than a year ago. It recently banned the import of nearly all commercial goods, saying Hamas was benefiting from their sale.
Last month, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and Yoav Gallant, the former defense minister, saying they had “intentionally and knowingly deprived the civilian population in Gaza of objects indispensable to their survival, including food, water, and medicine and medical supplies, as well as fuel and electricity.” The warrants drew a furious response from Mr. Netanyahu and from Israelis across the political spectrum, some of whom accused the court of antisemitism.
Over the weekend, Moshe Yaalon, a former Israeli defense minister who has become a critic of Mr. Netanyahu, said he believed Israel was committing war crimes and ethnic cleansing in Gaza.
The Biden administration, while generally supporting Mr. Netanyahu’s war aims, has criticized Israel for the lack of aid entering Gaza. In October, the United States threatened to withhold military aid to Israel if more goods did not enter Gaza within 30 days and demanded that at least 350 aid trucks enter each day.
Israel failed to meet that goal, but the Biden administration did not follow through on its threat to cut off military support.
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