Israels USbacked Gaza aid plan may lead to second Nakba UN agency chief warns
The head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees has told Middle East Eye that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's plan to fully seize Gaza, coupled with the new Israeli-US aid distribution plan for the enclave, appears to be a prelude to a second Nakba.
Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner-general of Unrwa, also criticised Israel for sending a small convoy of trucks carrying vital supplies into the enclave, saying it was "far too little" and that "everyone in Gaza is [going] hungry".
"For the time being, what we are talking about is a drop in a sea of distress and in a sea of needs," he told MEE in a wide-ranging interview in the Swiss city of Geneva.
"We are confronted with a completely fabricated, man-made hunger. Hunger is deepening and starvation seems to be used as a weapon of war," he added.
Global outrage has been steadily rising after Israel resumed its siege on Gaza 11 weeks ago, leaving nearly the entire population of 2.1 million Palestinians on the brink of starvation, with medicine and fuel supplies exhausted.
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The siege has led to warnings by a UN hunger monitoring mechanism and triggered unprecedented criticism from Israel's western allies, including the UK, Canada and France.
The countries have warned they would take "concrete action", including sanctions, if Israel continues its military campaign in Gaza and siege on humanitarian aid.
The Netanyahu government, however, has largely ignored the international outcry.
On Wednesday, Netanyahu reiterated his government's intention to fully occupy Gaza and to implement a new US-backed aid distribution scheme that would effectively replace all UN humanitarian relief in Gaza.
The scheme will be managed by a Geneva-based entity called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which would manage the delivery of aid to pre-screened Palestinians at a number of distribution centres in the south of the enclave.
'We have seen during the ceasefire... that when there are no obstacles, no hindrances, that the humanitarian community was capable of significantly scaling up its assistance and reaching the people in need'
- Philippe Lazzarini
Netanyahu outlined the plan in a televised speech on Wednesday, saying it aims to prevent Hamas from controlling humanitarian aid.
The plan has three stages: the first involves the entry of "basic food supplies" into Gaza; the second entails setting up food distribution points managed by US companies and secured by the Israeli army; in the third stage, Netanyahu said, Israel plans to create a "sterile zone" in southern Gaza, where the civilian population would be relocated from combat zones.
"In this zone - free of Hamas - the people of Gaza will receive the full range of humanitarian aid," Netanyahu said.
But UN officials, including Lazzarini, have rejected the plan as an attempt to supplant the UN’s existing humanitarian distribution system in Gaza.
"My question to start with is why reinvent the wheel?" he told MEE.
Lazzarini said that prior to the current siege, the UN and its partner NGOs had been able to avert famine. But their efforts have since been upended by the renewed ban on aid.
"We have seen during the ceasefire, two months or two and a half months ago, that when there are no obstacles, no hindrances, that the humanitarian community was capable of significantly scaling up its assistance and reaching the people in need,” he said.
Lacks independence, impartiality and humanity
Lazzarini described the aid plan as "an instrument of a forced displacement of the population", essentially making it a war crime and crime against humanity under international law.
He pointed out that the scheme appears to be part of the Israeli army's intent to force the population from the north to the south of the Gaza Strip.
'It is not possible for a humanitarian organisation, which truly respects the basic humanitarian principles, to adhere to such a scheme'
- Philippe Lazzarini
He said that the UN and other humanitarian organisations currently operate 400 food distribution points across Gaza. However, the new foundation is centralising aid delivery to designated areas in the south, requiring people to travel from across the enclave to access basic food and supplies before returning to their original locations.
"With the new system, the people are asked to go to four different locations, which means it is forcing the people to move from where they are and, in fact, to regroup around this distribution cluster," he explained. "So it becomes an instrument of a forced displacement of the population."
Secondly, Lazzarini said the system requires prior vetting of aid recipients, which would contravene humanitarian norms of non-discriminatory aid distribution.
"It's a plan which falls short of aligning or abiding by basic humanitarian principles such as independence, impartiality, but also humanity," he said.
"Not everybody will be able to go, which means a number of people will be discriminated against when it comes to the assistance," he pointed out.
"But also you need to be in good health to be able to walk hundreds of metres - if not kilometres - to go to pick up your parcel of food and to go back to your family, which also the de facto would eliminate from the distribution scheme the female head of household, for example, or the most vulnerable or elderly people in in the Gaza Strip," he added.
"It is not possible for a humanitarian organisation, which truly respects the basic humanitarian principles, to adhere to such a scheme."
Lazzarini expressed doubts that the new scheme will succeed in replacing the UN’s humanitarian system in Gaza. He said its objective is far from being humanitarian.
"I do not think that such a model will succeed. But this model seems also to be put in place in order to support more a military objective than a real humanitarian concern."
'Second Nakba'
Lazzarini said that Netanyahu’s plan to fully seize Gaza, coupled with the new aid distribution plan, appears to be a prelude to a second Nakba.
"If Gaza is no land for Palestinians anymore, it will be considered by them as being their second Nakba."
Nakba refers to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians during the creation of Israel in 1948, when 750,000 were forcibly displaced from their homes and became refugees in neighbouring countries.
Some 80 percent of the Gaza population are refugees or descendants of refugees displaced since the Nakba.
Today, there are 5.8 million Palestinian refugees registered by Unrwa, living in dozens of camps in the occupied West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.
Unrwa, whose staff members are mostly Palestinian refugees, has been at the receiving end of Israeli attacks since the beginning of Israel’s war on Gaza in October 2023. At least 310 of its employees have been killed by the Israeli army over the past 19 months and over 80 percent of its premises have been destroyed.
Lazzarini said the organisation continues to operate with its remaining 12,000 staff despite the sustained Israeli attacks.
“Our staff are sharing the fate of the population in Gaza,” he said.
Israel's parliament, the Knesset, passed two laws in October 2024 banning Unrwa from operating inside Israel and occupied Palestine.
The laws effectively ban Unrwa from operating inside Israel, Gaza, the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. Israel has since closed six schools operated by Unrwa in occupied East Jerusalem.
The ban has triggered an ongoing case before the International Court of Justice, where states are asking the court to rule on Israel's obligations under international law to respect the immunities and privileges of UN agencies and to ensure the provision of humanitarian aid to the population under its occupation.
Israel’s government has long held a hostile stance towards Unrwa, in part because the agency maintains the refugee status of Palestinians expelled from their homes during the 1948 Nakba and their descendants.
In late January 2024, Israel accused 12 Unrwa workers of involvement in the 7 October Hamas-led attacks, alleging they had distributed ammunition and aided in civilian kidnappings.
However, a UN inquiry published in April last year found no evidence of wrongdoing by Unrwa staff. It also noted that Israel had not responded to requests for names and information and had failed to inform "Unrwa of any concrete concerns relating to Unrwa staff since 2011".
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