DaysofPal – Palestinian experts and civil society leaders say Israeli occupation and its allies are waging a multi-layered war on the Gaza Strip that now includes a concerted campaign to cut and control humanitarian funding, in a deliberate engineering of hunger among the population.
They point in particular to decisions by 16 donor states to suspend or reduce funding to key humanitarian agencies working in Gaza, foremost among them the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), at a time of severe food insecurity, soaring poverty and unemployment, and the near-collapse of vital sectors such as health and education.
The moves followed Israeli allegations in early 2024 that several UNRWA staff were linked to armed groups.
Those claims triggered the withdrawal of hundreds of millions of dollars from life‑saving humanitarian operations. They came on top of earlier cuts that had already weakened UNRWA’s emergency response capacity by more than 40 percent since October 2023.
Abdel Hamid Siyam, an expert on the UN and international organizations, said 16 countries initially responded to Israeli calls to freeze funding for UNRWA over the allegations against some of its employees.
Speaking to the newspaper Palestine, Siyam said that subsequent inquiries had not substantiated the broad accusations and had shown that UNRWA remains a professional agency that does not take political positions or engage in incitement, aside from a few isolated individual cases.
On that basis, several states have now moved to restore their contributions, he noted, with the major exception of the United States, which had already halted its funding during President Joe Biden’s administration, even before the latest claims surfaced.
Some European donors, including Switzerland and the Netherlands, have reduced or stopped their support, Siyam added, while other countries such as China, India, Russia and Iraq have stepped in with additional funds.
However, these new contributions have not filled the substantial gap left by the US withdrawal and other cuts.
Siyam underlined that funding for other humanitarian agencies, such as the World Food Program, the World Health Organization and UNICEF, is separate from UNRWA’s budget. Even so, UNRWA remains the primary agency directly tied to core services and assistance in Gaza, making it the most exposed to the current financial squeeze.
The shortfall has already forced UNRWA to adopt austerity measures, he said, including cutting working hours by 20 percent, reducing salaries by a similar margin, and laying off around 650 staff.
These steps have had a direct impact on education, health, relief and other services provided to Palestinian refugees.
Siyam argued that US and other Western responses to Israeli pressure form part of a broader strategy to terminate UNRWA’s role altogether and transfer responsibility for Palestinian refugees to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
Such a move, he warned, would fragment the collective refugee question into individual cases and undermine Palestinian claims to a collective right of return.
He also highlighted a structural vulnerability: most humanitarian agencies depend on voluntary contributions, with no binding provisions in the UN Charter guaranteeing fixed, mandatory funding.
This leaves them at the mercy of political shifts and donor agendas.
The consequences, he said, are felt immediately in Palestinian daily life through cuts to aid programs, income support, housing assistance and job opportunities, further degrading living conditions and basic services.
While some Arab states, including Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Kuwait, have provided partial support, Siyam said their contributions still fall short of actual needs.
He argued that wealthier Arab countries could, in principle, cover a significant part of UNRWA’s funding gap but have yet to do so at the required scale.
Mohsen Abu Ramadan, a member of the coordinating body of the Palestinian NGO Network, described what is happening as a multi-level war against the Palestinian people, one component of which is a war of funding that began with the targeting of UNRWA and has now expanded to encompass the wider humanitarian sector.
Abu Ramadan said that Israeli occupation has gone so far as to designate UNRWA a “terrorist organization” through Knesset legislation and has steadily sought to dry up its financial resources.
In parallel, he said, Israeli occupation has moved to impose new layers of oversight on international NGOs, including through a mechanism known as the CMCC, run under joint US–Israeli supervision from a site near the Gaza Strip.
Under this system, he explained, organizations are required to meet stringent conditions, such as submitting detailed staff lists and registering with Israeli bodies.
The Association of International Development Agencies (AIDA), an umbrella group for international NGOs operating in the occupied Palestinian territory, has rejected these demands because they pose serious security risks to humanitarian workers.
Because some NGOs refused to comply, Israeli occupation has restricted or blocked the work of several organizations, Abu Ramadan said, including Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders).
If the measures are ultimately upheld, Abu Ramadan said, international organizations intend to take the case to the International Court of Justice in an effort to halt the , politicization and securitization of humanitarian work, subordinating relief efforts to security vetting and political conditions.
He warned that these policies will shrink the financial and operational space for aid agencies in Gaza at a moment when the territory relies almost entirely on external assistance for food, medicine and basic services.
Some governments have refused to be drawn into the new control framework, he noted. Spain, for example, has declined to participate in the CMCC structure and has characterized certain Israeli practices as amounting to war crimes, a stance Abu Ramadan said reflects a principled rejection of US and Israeli conditions that endanger humanitarian staff.
He cautioned that sharing detailed staff data with Israeli occupation could expose aid workers to direct targeting, especially given the high number of humanitarian personnel killed since the start of the current war, and could also be used for arbitrary political “blacklisting” and organizational bans.
Beyond slowing and restricting aid, the funding squeeze has coincided with a severe shortfall in resources for Gaza’s reconstruction.
Abu Ramadan said existing reconstruction funds fall far below estimated needs, while Israeli occupation continues to restrict the entry of construction materials, equipment and even basic supplies.
Abu Ramadan stressed that the campaign is not limited to relief agencies. Palestinian human rights organizations, including Al-Dameer, Al-Mezan, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights and Al-Haq, have faced bans, funding cuts, account closures and financial investigations, he said.
Such measures, he argued, form part of an indirect war aimed at crippling human rights monitoring and advocacy, reducing documentation of alleged violations, and weakening legal challenges in international and domestic courts.
The combined effect of these policies, according to Abu Ramadan, is to entrench high levels of poverty and unemployment in Gaza and push the population to the brink of famine.
By systematically constraining aid, reconstruction and rights work, he said, Israeli occupation and some of its allies are effectively trying to render Gaza “unlivable” and to turn it into an environment people are forced to leave.
Both Siyam and Abu Ramadan called for a more robust response from Arab states and the broader international community, including governments, parliaments and civil society, to restore and safeguard humanitarian funding, defend the independence of aid and rights organizations, and prevent the deliberate strategy to use financial levers to starve and displace Gaza’s population.
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