Gaza Starving as UNRWA gets Strangled

Solidarity Delegation, Reflection #9

By, Noushin Framke

Our visit to the United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA) compound in East Jerusalem was devastating, but eye-opening. 

UNRWA is the UN agency tasked with assistance and protection of all Palestinian refugees through humanitarian services; it was created by the United Nations when Israel became a state in 1948. They have been doing their essential work since May 1950, and are funded by many UN member governments. Now in danger of losing funding, the fates of both civilians in Gaza and the region at large are at stake. 

We met with Adam Bouloukos, Director of UNRWA Affairs in the West Bank, who explained to our solidarity delegation that every dollar they receive goes to crucial, on-the-ground work to keep the region stable, and Palestinians alive.  In January, allegations broke that a few UNRWA employees in Gaza may have contributed to the October 7th attack on Israel. They were immediately terminated, and an investigation is ongoing. In the meantime, every dollar UNRWA loses, or has frozen, means less safety for all. “UNRWA provides support to millions of refugees in the region,” he explained. “We have nurses, doctors, sanitation laborers, social workers, and psychosocial support counselors. All of those staff are UNRWA employees who are delivering that service to the population directly — which is why, if we're not around, it's really a problem.”

Adam Bouloukos, Director of UNRWA Affairs in the West Bank.

“The 7th of October was a tragic day for Israel, and we have to recognize that,” Bouloukos continued. “People suffered, and that has this kind of ripple effect across the community… It’s a small country. But the actions in Gaza now are so beyond a response to the 7th of October that now we have a latent massacre of the civilian population, and that's just a fact…. You've got 75 years of occupation and [Gaza] is a traumatized population like none I’ve ever seen.” 

In the weeks since, 16 countries pulled or froze their funding for UNRWA, the practicalities of what the agency does for the region have been made clear. Even the Israeli military understands that UNRWA not being unable to provide any services could be a huge problem. After all, Israel has never provided the services that, as the occupying force, they must do under international law. 

“After allegations came out about the UNRWA staff in Gaza,” Bouloukos explained,  “within an hour, the first people to call me were the Israeli military. They said, ‘What does this mean? You're not going to close down, are you?’ Because that would be a nightmare for them.” In the meantime, UNRWA finds itself wrapped in more bureaucratic red tape than ever — something we saw with our own eyes before we even met Bouloukos.

On our way in, we passed three new-looking, gleaming white Toyota Land Cruisers, which we later learned were specially-built $200,000 armored vehicles. They were parked in the UNRWA compound with UN license plates, making an impressive statement. Bouloukos later explained that before the funding freeze, UNRWA had been working with the Australian government to secure these vehicles for use in order to keep their colleagues in the West Bank and Gaza safe. The Australians had plans to scrap and crush them because of a “use for 5 years only” government policy.  But because the cars are all in great shape, UNRWA instead secured them as donations to use for their humanitarian work. 

Then the funding freeze hit. Now, the three much-needed vehicles sit dormant in the parking area while UNRWA employees in Gaza try to keep working and to stay alive. Australia would rather freeze this donation of desperately needed vehicles than to do the right thing in a humanitarian catastrophe —not to mention that the UNRWA Director in Gaza right now in need of help is himself an Australian national. 

“So this is where we are,” said Bouloukos. “This is the discussion. It’s at the highest levels of government; even with Biden, talking about how many trucks are going in, and what's on the trucks: ‘Is it tuna fish in the cans or is it beans?’ This level of detail is just killing us. It’s really killing us.”

In the meantime, Gaza’s civilians and humanitarian workers are paying the price. This assault on Gaza represents the worst humanitarian crisis “in the UN's history… Worse than 20 years in Afghanistan,” said Bouloukos.  He continued, “We have a humanitarian crisis like we've never seen before in the UN, in Gaza, in a densely populated, already poor community with no way to leave, no place to go. There’s extreme violence, civilians killed, women and children, people who can't possibly be part of any kind of Hamas resistance or anything like that. And UNRWA is the only significantly large UN entity on the ground that can deliver the services.”

And yet as urgent and essential as their services are, UNRWA is nevertheless in an existential struggle for its own survival. “We're being attacked as an organization,” said Bouloukos. “We have our humanitarian delivery agenda, and we're being attacked as the creators of the conflict or the creators of the problem. Israel wants to get rid of us, and there's now discussions in the Knesset about that, because they figure if they can get rid of UNRWA they somehow get rid of the refugee problem.” What’s more, he added, “They don't want anybody doing any reporting. So journalists are being kicked out. Visas are being denied or are very short, so we only have two-month visas. How do you run an agency with two-month visas? Absent us, you have huge security problems… it’s a recipe for disaster.”

UNRWA’s services are just as needed in the West Bank as they are in Gaza. People in the West Bank talk about their house being rocketed to rubble, with a thousand soldiers showing up in their village late at night. Bouloukos told us about these night raids, saying “the equipment of the Israeli military is really impressive. They call them ‘search and arrest’ operations, but actually it's not local police showing up, knocking at the door and arresting. It's a full military contingent of 1000 soldiers, dozens of armored personnel carriers, shoulder mounted projectiles, with aerial bombardment, in various densely populated, very poor communities. Mostly in the refugee camps, but also in other parts of the West Bank.” 

In the West Bank, UNRWA has a big team, with nearly 4000 staff and 19 refugee camps that they support. They don't run the camps, but provide services in the refugee camps; they are often the only source of hope in the camps. The refugee camps hold between 5,000 and 20,000 people and are very densely populated; the UNRWA services are quite extensive, including 96 schools for 46,000 children. None of the camps have any kind of urban planning (water management, electricity, etc.), so all those services are in very poor condition without the kind of help UNRWA can provide. In some places, Israel only allows water to flow one day a week; other times, just a couple days a month.

UNRWA runs 43 health centers and over 200 offices, providing primary health care, education, relief and social services. UNRWA also does some distribution of food and non-food items to Bedouin communities, who are the poorest of the poor in the West Bank, having been driven out by Israeli settlers who are now living in Palestinian land.  Now, with the world’s attention mainly on the Gaza war, over 1000 Palestinians have been driven out of their West Bank homes in the last couple of months alone.

With over two million people at risk of famine in Gaza, there is a clear sign that the safety nets put in place by the UN to protect innocent civilians are collapsing. “We normally have trucks leaving here every day for Gaza, but we've only had one truck go since the 7th of October,” said Bouloukos. So it is no wonder that starvation has set in and Gaza is even out of animal feed now as a food source. There are aid trucks waiting to deliver food and life-saving services, only to sit at the borders of Gaza. It is well past time the United States pressures its ally Israel to allow food to enter the concentration camp that is now Gaza, before it’s too late.

Noushin Framke

Noushin Darya Framke is a West Asian Christian whose family is Armenian on one side and Iranian on the other. Noushin’s maternal grandmother walked into Iran in 1915 as a ten-year-old refugee survivor of the Armenian Genocide. Noushin was educated in Iran at a Presbyterian mission school and in boarding schools in England. She came to the United States in 1978 for college and her freshman year turned out to be the year of the Iranian Revolution. Noushin served six years as a member of MRTI, Mission Responsibility Through Investment, which advocates for corporate responsibility and socially responsible investing for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). From 2006, Noushin has been a founding member of IPMN. She is a member of the Presbyterian Church’s Committee on Ecumenical and Inter-religious Relations. She is also a member of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Advisory Board of Presbyterian Women. Noushin is a Presbyterian elder and lives in New Jersey and New York City. She and her husband of 42 years have 2 adult daughters.