UNRWA chief: Situation in Gaza 'teetering on edge'
Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees has warned that social order in the Gaza Strip is "teetering on the edge of a possible implosion" as a result of Israel's war against Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip.
"We are teetering on the edge of a possible implosion. Why? Because there is more and more a breakdown of a civil order," UNRWA Commissioner-General Lazzarini told reporters at a UN forum in Geneva on Thursday.
The remarks came amid a genocidal war that the Israeli regime has been waging against the Gaza Strip since October 7 following an operation staged by the territory's resistance groups, dubbed Operation al-Aqsa Storm.
The war, now in its third month, began after the Palestinian group's unprecedented October 7 attacks on Israel that Israeli officials say killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians.
Also on Thursday, Gaza's Health Ministry said 18,787 people, mostly women and children, had been killed, and more than 51,000 others injured in the Israeli strikes so far.
Ever since the onset of the war, the regime has also ramped up its aggression across the West Bank, killing hundreds of people across the occupied territory.
On Wednesday, Lazzarini said at the Global Refugee Forum that the people of Gaza are “running out of time and options,” as they face Israeli bombardment, deprivation, and disease in an ever-ever-shrinking space.
Lazzarini, who has described the situation in Gaza as “hell on earth,” warned that people in the Palestinian territory are “facing the darkest chapter of their history since 1948, and it has been a painful history.”
He said the people of Gaza are now crammed into less than one-third of the original territory, near the Egyptian border, and “it is unrealistic to think that people will remain resilient in the face of unlivable conditions of such magnitude.”
The city of Rafah, according to Lazzarini, is now hosting well over a million people while it used to be home to 280,000 people.
He also pointed out that the UN agency is very far from an “adequate humanitarian response,” adding that when aid is delivered, it is often not more than a can of tuna or beans and one bottle of water for a large family to share.
While most aid delivery in Gaza depends on the UNRWA, the agency’s capacities are “now on the verge of collapse,” he said.
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