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Critics Warn Bipartisan Bill to Abolish UNRWA Will Be 'Death Sentence For Thousands of Palestinians'
"UNRWA is vital to keeping hundreds of thousands of the most vulnerable Palestinians alive."
Jul 17, 2026
Human rights advocates are raising alarm about a bipartisan bill in the US House of Representatives aimed at abolishing the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, which they say will help Israel in its efforts to starve Palestinians in the occupied territories of food and medical aid.
Across Gaza, the West Bank, and other surrounding areas, UNRWA provides emergency food or cash assistance to roughly 2.6 million people and records about 10.5 million primary-care visits annually, according to UN Secretary-General António Guterres.
But since the genocide in Gaza began, Israel has waged a multifront campaign to dismantle the agency, legally banning it from operating in Israeli territory, blocking it from bringing desperately needed aid and staff into Gaza, and pressuring nations around the world to cut off funding based on unfounded allegations that the organization is controlled by Hamas, which dissolved Gaza's governing body earlier this month as part of the ceasefire agreement with Israel.
The bill introduced in the US House on Wednesday by Reps. Mike Lawler (R-NY) and Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) would require the State Department to "dismantle" and transition its services to other nongovernmental organizations.
"UNRWA has been corrupted by Hamas for years, with documented ties to terrorism," claimed Lawler, the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa. "That’s why [Rep. Gottheimer] and I have introduced the bipartisan Replace UNRWA with Real Humanitarian Assistance Act to abolish UNRWA and replace it with trusted partners that will deliver aid to those who need it, without empowering terrorist organizations."
Gottheimer added that UNRWA "employs Hamas terrorists involved in the October 7 [2023] attack," echoing a claim that has been presented by Israel in its assault on the agency.
In 2024, Israel accused 19 of UNRWA's more than 13,000 employees in Gaza of having taken part in the attack, which resulted in the death of about 1,200 Israelis.
A UN investigation found that nine of the 19 employees may have been involved in the attack. Investigators found insufficient evidence to support involvement in nine cases and obtained no evidence in one case. UNRWA said the employment of the nine implicated staff members would be terminated.
Israeli officials have continued to portray UNRWA as a "civilian arm" of Hamas, alleging that hundreds of militants lurk among its ranks, but independent reviews have uncovered no evidence of this.
Nevertheless, many nations have taken Israel's claims at face value, initially cutting off funds and creating an existential funding crisis for the agency. While many have since resumed funding, its largest contributor, the US—which provided around a third of the agency's budget—has not, and the agency has been forced to scale back services for vulnerable refugees.
"This bill would be a death sentence for thousands of Palestinians who depend on UNRWA services," said Matt Duss, the executive vice president at the Center for International Policy (CIP) and a former foreign policy adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). "What's really going on here: using the false claim that 'UNRWA equals Hamas' to advance the Israeli right's goal of removing the Palestinian refugee issue from the agenda."
Adil Haque, a law professor at Rutgers University, raised concerns about what sort of NGO might replace UNRWA if it were fully dismantled.
"This is how we ended up with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) and daily mass shootings of starving civilians," he said, referring to the US-Israeli nonprofit that supplanted UNRWA as the primary distributor of aid before shutting down after the October 2025 "ceasefire."
The organization consolidated aid distribution to a small number of sites under Israeli military control, where soldiers routinely fired into massive crowds of starving people. At least 859 people were killed near GHF sites in less than two months in 2025, and thousands more were wounded, according to a UN report.
Lawler and Gottheimer's bill has 23 co-sponsors, all of whom are Republicans. However, a majority of Democrats in both the House and Senate voted for a spending package in March 2024 that defunded the agency. Some Democrats have since sponsored legislation aimed at restoring the funds.
"UNRWA is vital to keeping hundreds of thousands of the most vulnerable Palestinians alive," said Dylan Williams, the vice president for government affairs at CIP, in response to a post by Lawler promoting the legislation. "Your attempt to kill it unconscionably compounds Israel’s genocide in Gaza."
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‘New Level of Open and Deliberate Defiance of International Law’: Israel Demolishes UNRWA Buildings
"What happens today to UNRWA will happen tomorrow to any other international organization or diplomatic mission, whether in the occupied Palestinian territory or anywhere around the world," said the agency.
Jan 20, 2026
Israeli authorities' demolition of the headquarters of the United Nations agency that has for decades provided aid and civil services to Palestinians in territories illegally occupied by Israel was about "more than destroying walls," said one journalist and rights advocate in the region.
The bulldozing of the complex on Monday attacks the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East's (UNRWA) "very mission since 1949, violates the rights of Palestinian refugees, and aims to erase the support system they rely on," said Maha Hussaini, head of media and public engagement at the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor.
Hussaini was among those who spoke out as Israeli forces stormed the complex with bulldozers and began destroying buildings at the site after having sealed off the surrounding streets in East Jerusalem, the occupied city that Palestinians consider the capital of a future Palestinian state.
The Israel Defense Forces and demolition workers were also accompanied by Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who said the destruction of the compound, which has operated at the site for decades, marked a "historic day."
UN officials and other rights advocates, such as Jonathan Whittall—formerly the head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Human Affairs in the occupied Palestinian territories—said Israeli authorities were once again broadcasting their "contravention of their obligations under international law."
This morning, Israeli authorities are demolishing #UnitedNations property in #EastJerusalem, yet another live-streamed contravention of their obligations under international law. Just months ago, the ICJ reaffirmed that Israel "may not obstruct the functions of UNRWA in the OPT". pic.twitter.com/wqXvKzcKkH
— Jonathan Whittall (@_jwhittall) January 20, 2026
Whittall emphasized that Israel's destruction of UN property came months after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) "reaffirmed that Israel 'may not obstruct the functions of UNRWA.'"
UNRWA released a statement accusing Israel of "a new level of open and deliberate defiance of international law," noting that the country is obligated "to protect and respect the inviolability of UN premises."
Ben-Gvir led the destruction of the headquarters more than a year after Israeli lawmakers passed a law banning UNRWA, and weeks after the country banned dozens of international aid groups from operating in Gaza. Israeli officials claimed in 2024 that a small fraction of UNRWA's 13,000 staffers in Gaza had been involved in a Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, but an independent investigation found that they had not backed up their claims with evidence.
UNRWA noted that last week, Israeli forces stormed an UNRWA health center in East Jerusalem and ordered it closed, and water and power supplies to the agency's health and education buildings across the region are scheduled to be cut in the coming weeks.
"These actions, together with previous arson attacks and a large-scale disinformation campaign, fly in the face of the ruling in October by the International Court of Justice, which restated that Israel is obliged under international law to facilitate UNRWA’s operations, not hinder or prevent them," said UNRWA. "The court also stressed that Israel has no jurisdiction over East Jerusalem."
"There can be no exceptions. This must be a wake-up call," the agency added. "What happens today to UNRWA will happen tomorrow to any other international organization or diplomatic mission, whether in the occupied Palestinian territory or anywhere around the world. International law has come under increasing attack for too long and is risking irrelevancy in the absence of response by member states.”
In the UK, member of Parliament Jeremy Corbyn spoke to his fellow lawmakers about the destruction of the UNRWA compound—on top of Israel's continued slaughter of Palestinians despite a "ceasefire" deal that was reached in October and settler attacks in the West Bank—and demanded to know: "When is the British government going to impose sanctions on Israel for its endless violations of international law?"
Israel has begun bulldozing the UNRWA headquarters in occupied Jerusalem.
When is the British government going to impose sanctions on Israel for its endless violations of international law? pic.twitter.com/YADND8varu
— Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) January 20, 2026
International law advocate and UN representative Mohamad Safa noted that Israeli authorities violated Article 52 of Additional Protocol (I) Geneva Conventions and the UN Charter when they took over UNRWA's headquarters and raised the Israeli flag there.
"Another violation of international law being broadcast live. Israel's impunity must end!" he said.
Last week, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said the UN could take Israel before the ICJ over its laws targeting UNRWA.
The UN, said Guterres, cannot remain indifferent to "actions taken by Israel, which are in direct contravention of the obligations of Israel under international law. They must be reversed without delay.”
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Israel's Attack on Aid Organizations in Gaza Is an Attack on Palestinian Survival
What emerges is a coherent strategy: first, producing dependency through siege, destruction, and institutional dismantling; then, weaponizing that dependency by controlling or withdrawing the means of staying alive.
Jan 03, 2026
Israel’s decision to halt the operations of 37 international aid groups marks a dangerous escalation in its ongoing genocidal campaign, which has destroyed Gaza’s capacity to sustain life through bombardment and siege, and now moves to deprive survivors of the last remaining forms of assistance.
While framed as an administrative measure, this latest move cannot be understood in isolation. It is the culmination of a longer process that has unfolded over the past two years, as Israel has systematically dismantled the humanitarian and medical infrastructure sustaining Gaza’s civilian population.
By defunding and delegitimizing The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), the primary agency tasked with aiding Palestinian refugees; and by leveling accusations against humanitarian and health personnel, in the absence of meaningful global pushback, Israel has further entrenched a longstanding system of weaponized aid.
While the Israeli government initially framed the suspension of aid groups as being linked to their failure to comply with new registration requirements, it later noted in a statement that the process was “intended to prevent the exploitation of aid by Hamas, which in the past operated under the cover of certain international aid organizations, knowingly or unknowingly.”
Such criteria not only regulate aid work; they effectively silence dissent, conditioning the ability to deliver humanitarian assistance on political conformity.
Israel has long accused Hamas of exploiting humanitarian aid, despite such claims having repeatedly been debunked, including by senior Israeli military officials themselves.The new regulatory framework extends well beyond technical compliance. It introduces explicitly political and ideological conditions for aid delivery, disqualifying organisations that have supported boycotts of Israel or engaged in “delegitimization campaigns.”
Such criteria not only regulate aid work; they effectively silence dissent, conditioning the ability to deliver humanitarian assistance on political conformity.
UNRWA Test Case
The dismantling of UNRWA was a critical test case. For decades, the agency served as the backbone of civilian life for Palestinian refugees, providing healthcare, education, food assistance, and social services, under conditions of Israeli occupation and siege.
After October 7, 2023, Israel intensified its efforts to recast UNRWA not as a humanitarian agency operating under an international mandate, but as a political problem to be neutralized.
Allegations that a limited number of UNRWA employees were affiliated with Hamas, or involved in the October 7 attacks, were rapidly generalized into claims about the organisation as a whole. These claims triggered sweeping donor suspensions—including the immediate freezing of US funding, among UNRWA’s largest sources of support—illustrating how fast states are willing to act on evidence-free allegations from Israel, whose overall goal is to avoid global scrutiny of its crimes.
The persecution of UNRWA thus demonstrated how easily a central pillar of the humanitarian system can be dismantled, setting the stage for what would come next, as Israel launched a broader attack on international aid groups operating in Gaza.
In the months that followed, Israel blocked UNRWA’s operations on the ground and passed legislation criminalizing its activities across historic Palestine.
The response from the international community was striking in its weakness: While some donors ultimately resumed funding to UNRWA, no binding enforcement mechanisms were activated, nor were any serious political costs imposed on Israel.
The persecution of UNRWA thus demonstrated how easily a central pillar of the humanitarian system can be dismantled, setting the stage for what would come next, as Israel launched a broader attack on international aid groups operating in Gaza.
The consequences of this latest move are devastating. For decades, such organizations have provided essential services, amid the systematic degradation of civilian infrastructure and repeated assaults on healthcare in Gaza. Groups like Doctors Without Borders and Medical Aid for Palestinians offer vital resources for emergency and trauma care, along with other key services to sustain Gaza’s fragile health system, at a time when many hospitals are damaged or out of service.
Buffers Against Collapse
The centrality of international aid groups to Gaza’s survival is itself a measure of the depth of destruction imposed on Palestinian society. Such actors have long operated in spaces where Palestinian institutions have been dismantled, and political solutions deferred.
In the absence of an end to Israel’s occupation and siege, their presence has become one of the few remaining buffers against total collapse. In the context of an ongoing genocide and the destruction of the infrastructure required to sustain life in Gaza, stripping away the remaining humanitarian presence amounts to a direct assault on survival itself.
The Israeli government has sought to downplay the impact of the suspensions by asserting that the targeted organisations “did not bring aid into Gaza throughout the current ceasefire, and even in the past their combined contribution amounted to only about 1% of the total aid volume.”
In Gaza, where Israel has already destroyed the material conditions of life, the suspension of humanitarian operations completes this logic.
But this calculation of material aid fails to capture the nature of the work and services these groups have provided, including specialized medical care, trauma surgery, rehabilitation for injured and disabled people, psychosocial and mental health services, and sustained institutional support to keep Gaza’s collapsing health system functioning.
In 2025 alone, Doctors Without Borders carried out nearly 800,000 outpatient consultations and treated more than 100,000 trauma cases in Gaza, while Medical Aid for Palestinians made many critical interventions, including through expanded cancer care in the territory’s north.
Israel’s 1% calculation, which has not been independently verified, reduces humanitarian impact to quantitative supply indicators, rather than lifesaving capacity. To present these organizations as marginal is not a factual assessment, but a narrative designed to normalize their removal.
What emerges is a coherent strategy: first, producing dependency through siege, destruction, and institutional dismantling; then, weaponizing that dependency by controlling or withdrawing the means of survival.
In Gaza, where Israel has already destroyed the material conditions of life, the suspension of humanitarian operations completes this logic. This is not a failure of humanitarianism, but part of a broader genocidal strategy, where the regulation and withdrawal of aid is used to render survival itself increasingly impossible.
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Gaza No Longer Officially Facing Famine—But 1.6 Million Palestinians Still in 'Man-Made Hunger Crisis'
"To end this catastrophe, supplies must be let in at scale and humanitarians allowed to do their job," said the head of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees.
Dec 19, 2025
While the global initiative that tracks hunger crises concluded Friday that the Gaza Strip is no longer facing "famine," the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification report echoed warnings from United Nations leaders and humanitarian groups that "the situation remains critical" for Palestinians who have endured over two years of an Israeli assault and blockade.
Famine was declared in August, sparking a worldwide outrage over what one research group called "genocidal starvation." The new IPC report—released after an October ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel—says that "following a significant reduction in conflict, a proposed peace plan, and improved access for both humanitarian and commercial food deliveries, food security conditions have improved in the Gaza Strip."
However, the report also notes that between mid-October and the end of November, "around 1.6 million people (77% of the population analyzed) faced high levels of acute food insecurity (IPC Phase 3 or above)," including "more than half a million people in emergency (IPC Phase 4) and over 100,000 people in catastrophe (IPC Phase 5)."
Those conditions—over three-quarters of Gaza's population at risk of famine—are expected to continue through April. In other words, as Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), put it, "Gaza remains in a man-made hunger crisis."
The latest IPC report "underscores how fragile the gains have been since the ceasefire began in October," he said on social media. "To end this catastrophe, supplies must be let in at scale and humanitarians allowed to do their job. UNRWA has food parcels for 1.1 million people and flour for the entire population waiting to enter the Gaza Strip."
As the Associated Press reported Friday, while Israeli government agencies rejected the IPC findings, humanitarian leaders and Palestinians have highlighted all that the people of Gaza continue to endure because of Israel's war on the strip:
"This is not a debate about truck numbers or calories on paper. It's about whether people can actually access food, clean water, shelter, and healthcare safely and consistently. Right now, they cannot," said Bushra Khalidi, Oxfam's policy lead for Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory.
People must be able to rebuild their homes, grow food, and recover, and the conditions for that are still being denied, she said.
Even with more products in the markets, Palestinians say they can't afford it. "There is food and meat, but no one has money," said Hany al-Shamali, who was displaced from Gaza City. "How can we live?"
Earlier this week, the Humanitarian Country Team of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, which brings together heads of UN entities and over 200 nongovernmental organizations, urged the international community to "take immediate and concrete actions to press the Israeli authorities to lift all impediments," including a new registration process for NGOs, that continue to undermine lifesaving operations, "or risk the collapse of the humanitarian response, particularly in the Gaza Strip."
The team emphasized that "humanitarian access is not optional, conditional, or political. It is a legal obligation under international humanitarian law, particularly in Gaza, where Israel has failed to ensure that the population is adequately supplied. Israeli authorities must allow and facilitate rapid, unimpeded passage of humanitarian relief. They must immediately reverse policies that obstruct humanitarian operations and ensure that humanitarian organizations are able to operate without compromising humanitarian principles. Lifesaving assistance must be allowed to reach Palestinians without further delay."
Israel has killed at least 70,669 Palestinians in the strip and wounded 171,165 others since launching its retaliation for the Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023, the Gaza Health Ministry said Thursday. Experts have warned that the true death toll is likely far higher.
Winter storms are exacerbating already dire conditions in Gaza, including by damaging and destroying shelters of displaced people. Oxfam's humanitarian director, Marta Valdes García, said Friday that "with 1.6 million people found to be facing acute food insecurity... we are incredibly concerned that winter is already bringing flooding and more misery to thousands of hungry people with little or no money, who are now exposed in terrible living conditions."
Multiple infants have died of hypothermia in recent days, including a 14-day-old named Mohammed, whose family is living in a tent after being displaced from their home in the east of Khan Younis. His mother, Eman Abu al-Khair, told Al Jazeera that "I can still hear his tiny cries in my ears... I sleep and drift off, unable to believe that his crying and waking me at night will never happen again."
"His body was cold as ice. His hands and feet were frozen, his face stiff and yellowish, and he was barely breathing... I woke my husband immediately so we could take him to the hospital, but he couldn't find any means of transportation to get us there," the 34-year-old recalled. "As soon as daylight broke, we rushed with an animal-drawn cart towards the hospital... But unfortunately, we arrived too late. His condition was already critical."
Another 29-day-old baby, Saeed Eseid Abdeen, was declared dead at Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza on Thursday, according to Drop Site News and Doctors Without Borders, also known by its French name, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).
A fourth child has frozen to death in Gaza in just 10 days—two of them babies—as Israel continues blocking tents and winter shelter aid, despite UN supplies pre-positioned at the border that could immediately shelter more than 1.3 million displaced Palestinians.
[image or embed]
— Drop Site (@dropsitenews.com) December 18, 2025 at 7:41 PM
"Children are losing their lives because they lack the most basic items for survival," Bilal Abu Saada, nursing team supervisor at Nasser Hospital, said in a statement from MSF. "Babies are arriving to the hospital cold, with near-death vital signs: Even our best efforts are not enough. They say the war has ended, but people are still having to fight for their lives."
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Israeli Raid on UNRWA Compound Slammed as 'Dangerous Precedent'
"This latest action represents a blatant disregard of Israel’s obligation as a United Nations member state to protect and respect the inviolability of UN premises," said UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini.
Dec 08, 2025
United Nations officials and others strongly condemned Monday's raid by Israeli authorities on a facility run by the UN's office for Palestinian refugees in occupied East Jerusalem—an act one rights group decried as part of an ongoing effort "to undermine and ultimately eliminate" the lifesaving agency.
Israeli police and other officials forcibly entered the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) compound early Monday, pulling down a UN flag on the facility's roof and replacing it with an Israeli one. Israeli officials said the raid was ordered over unpaid taxes.
"They call it 'debt collection'—we call it erasure," Claudia Webbe, a socialist former member of British Parliament, said on social media. "Over 70,000 dead in Gaza, they now seek to kill the memory of the living. The occupation must end."
Police vehicles including motorcycles, trucks, and forklifts entered the compound, while communications were cut and furniture, computer equipment, and other property were seized from the facility, according to UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini.
"This latest action represents a blatant disregard of Israel’s obligation as a United Nations member state to protect and respect the inviolability of UN premises," Lazzarini said in a statement.
"To allow this represents a new challenge to international law, one that creates a dangerous precedent anywhere else the UN is present across the world," he added.
Secretary-General António Guterres was among the other senior UN officials who condemned Monday's raid.
“This compound remains United Nations premises and is inviolable and immune from any other form of interference,” he said.
“I urge Israel to immediately take all necessary steps to restore, preserve, and uphold the inviolability of UNRWA premises and to refrain from taking any further action with regard to UNRWA premises, in line with its obligations under the charter of the United Nations and its other obligations under international law," Guterres added.
In late 2024, Israeli lawmakers approved a ban on UNRWA in Israel over disproven allegations that some of its staffers were Hamas members who took part in the October 7, 2023 attack. Those accusations led to numerous nations suspending financial support for UNRWA, although most of the countries have since restored funding. Israel has also sought to ban UNRWA from Gaza since early 2024.
Israeli forces have killed more than 370 UNRWA staff members since October 2023 and destroyed or damaged over 300 of the agency's facilities in Gaza. Lazzarini and others have also accused Israeli forces of torturing UNRWA staffers in a bid to force false confessions of Hamas involvement.
In October, the International Court of Justice—which is currently weighing a genocide case against Israel—found that UNRWA has not been infiltrated by Hamas as claimed by Israeli leaders.
Others also condemned Monday's raid, including Human Rights Watch (HRW), which called the action part of an effort "to undermine and ultimately eliminate a United Nations agency providing vital services to millions of Palestinian refugees."
"Governments should condemn Israel's unlawful moves against UNRWA and urgently act to stop further abuses," HRW added.
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Trump Gives Full Support to Israel's Ceasefire-Violating Attacks That Killed 100+ Palestinians
Middle East scholar Mouin Rabbani said the US is allowing Israel "to erode the terms of the agreement with increasing violence, with increasing frequency, until there is nothing left."
Oct 29, 2025
US President Donald Trump gave his full support to Israel's ceasefire-breaking strikes, which reportedly killed at least 104 Palestinians, including 40 children, while wounding another 253 people on Tuesday and into Wednesday.
Airstrikes devastated Gaza City, Khan Yunis, and refugee camps in central Gaza, hitting homes, tents, and the courtyard of a hospital, according to Middle East Eye, leaving many of the wounded in critical condition and many others trapped beneath rubble.
The director of Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City described the situation as "catastrophic," with two years of destruction and a punishing Israeli blockade of humanitarian aid having left the hospital with no medicine or medical supplies to treat the wounded.
In remarks aboard Air Force One on Wednesday, Trump said that Israel carried out the strikes after a 37-year-old Israeli soldier was reportedly killed by Hamas in southern Gaza.
“As I understand it, they took out an Israeli soldier," Trump said. "So the Israelis hit back, and they should hit back. When that happens, they should hit back." Trump described the carnage as "retribution" for the soldier's death, for which Hamas has denied responsibility.
In addition to the soldier's killing, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Tuesday's strikes also came after Hamas returned only partial remains of an Israeli hostage, Ofir Tzarfati, who died in captivity after being abducted and taken to Gaza on October 7, 2023. Israel has claimed that Hamas attempted to “stage a false discovery” of the body for the international Red Cross “to create a false impression of efforts to locate the bodies”.
As part of the ceasefire agreement, Hamas has returned the living Israeli hostages and is also required to return the remains of those who died during the two years of Israeli bombardment. As of Monday, the remains of 16 hostages had been handed over, but 13 still remain, with Hamas saying it has struggled to locate them in the delapidated Gaza Strip, which has been largely reduced to rubble by Israel's aerial campaign.
Chris Gunness, a former spokesperson for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), argued that the Trump deal was “set up to fail” using the provision requiring the return of captives' remains.
"There were so many bodies under so much rubble," Gunness said in an interview with AJ+. "There was so much confusion after two years of genocide. It was going to be very difficult for anybody to deliver the bodies and the captives given what has been going on. So Israel has a pretext to call off the plan, to reimpose the blockade, to restart the genocide if it wants to."
After Tuesday’s deadly bombings, Israel said Wednesday it had "resumed" the ceasefire. But even before the attacks removed any doubt, the ceasefire appeared to be in name only. In a press release before the bombing began, the Gaza Media Office alleged that Israel had already committed 125 violations of the agreement.
Between October 11, when the ceasefire went into effect, and October 28, nearly 100 Palestinians were killed and over 300 wounded in near-daily attacks by Israel, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. This is despite the fact that the agreement stated explicitly that "all military operations, including aerial and artillery bombardment and targeting operations, will be suspended.”
Israel has also not abided by requirements that it allow the “immediate commencement of full entry of humanitarian aid.” In what it said was a response to Hamas’ failure to return hostage remains, Israel announced last week that it had closed the critical Rafah crossing, and just 15% of the aid called for in the plan has been allowed to enter Gaza, where 55,000 children are suffering from acute malnutrition according to a Lancet report released last week.
As bombs rained down on Gaza on Tuesday, Vice President JD Vance asserted that "the ceasefire is holding," but that it "doesn't mean that there aren't going to be little skirmishes."
The next day, Trump insisted that even after Israel’s colossal violation of the ceasefire, “nothing is going to jeopardize” the agreement, which he and many in the press have raced to portray as a historic victory for his legacy as a peacemaker.
But Mouin Rabbani, a fellow at the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies, told Al Jazeera that even while claiming to respect the ceasefire, Israel was clearly looking for any excuse it could find to resume the state of war.
"Israel was unwilling to enter this agreement, was dragged into it by the United States, and has been seeking to erode it ever since," Rabbani said.
He said he believes the US will not allow Israel to cross the "red line" of resuming "full-scale war," but that "by showing indulgence for lesser infractions, we're on a downward slope where Israel is able to erode the terms of the agreement with increasing violence, with increasing frequency, until there is nothing left."
He noted that the US now has a military command center directly in Israel with the stated purpose of "monitoring" the ceasefire.
"Arab, Israeli, and international press reports have all referred to this as 'Bibi-sitting,' basically reflecting American concerns that Israel is going to unilaterally abrogate this agreement," he said. “What this means is that the United States is now, to a much greater degree than previously, directly responsible for what happens in the Gaza Strip.”
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'The Howl That the World Doesn't Hear': A Gaza Teacher in Her Own Words
At 28, Reham Khaled has lived through eight wars of varying intensity. The current war has been the most brutal she's known.
Sep 20, 2025
So begin the words of a Gaza teacher's recent post after being forced to flee her home in the Al-Daraj neighborhood of Gaza City and the school she'd set up in a tent. A bomb tore apart the tent next to the one where Reham Khaled taught her students. Two were killed:
Pain is not a passing sensation, but a being that resides within. It has fangs and fingers. It presses on the heart, weighs down the chest, and makes the breath hesitate like a hole in the air. There is a moment, just one moment, when all the internal walls we have tried to build crumble and we reach what is called the threshold of pain. At this threshold, pain is no longer just an echo or a tremor. It turns into a howl.
Skilled at weaving the horror that is war-torn Gaza with evocative imagery of far sweeter things, Khaled says that before the bomb tore apart the tent, she and her father-in-law were dreaming of eating mangoes and chicken. “And then the rocket exploded. One moment. A collective scream. A small lake of blood begins with two children whose greatest ambition was to eat chicken and mango. It is a moment, but inside me it is years.”
Born in Gaza's Jabalia refugee camp, her grandparents were displaced from the Palestinian village of Najd which was ethnically cleansed in 1948 when the state of Israel was created. The Israeli town of Sderot was later constructed over the site of the village, as well as the nearby village of Huj, according to Working Class History.com.
Her goal, other than giving as many students as possible the right to education, is to instill one idea in the children of Gaza “so that they may travel the world and spread peace one day."
In Gaza, Khaled studied in UNRWA schools, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, established by the UN in December 1949, to provide relief and humanitarian assistance to Palestine refugees displaced by the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.
At 28, she has lived through eight wars of varying intensity. The current war has been the most brutal she's known. She and her extended family have been displaced 15 times.
The howl is “not a loud, audible scream”, explains Khaled, “but the howl of the soul, that subtle sound that the ear cannot pick up but shakes the entire body from within. It's like the wind sweeping through an empty house, or the emptiness exploding in the head. In Gaza, this howl has become the secret language of everyone. The child who smiles so as not to cry in front of his mother, the mother who hides her tears from her child, the man who stands silently before the corpse of his son. They all howl from within, with a voice the world does not hear.”
A teacher of language and literature, Khaled is not overtly political and shies away from assigning blame for what is happening to her people once again. All she knows, she tells me when we exchange more messages, is that “the language of killing and violence is the biggest mistake that my people have been paying the price for two years or more.... The world is mean, cruel, and dull to the point of melting the nerves. I try to keep up with it, but I break. I try to look at it, but I find its eyes devoid of any glimmer of humanity.”
At this writing, Israeli forces have destroyed an estimated 70% of Gaza City. Airstrikes have turned entire apartment blocks and tent encampments into rubble. The Israel Defense Forces claim, without evidence, that Hamas has been using the buildings for surveillance; justifying collective punishment of Gaza City's entire population. While collective punishment is a war crime and prohibited under the 1949 Geneva Conventions, this has done nothing to protect innocent civilians throughout Gaza from October 2023 to the present. An estimated 65,000 have been killed to date, with upwards of ten thousand trapped under the rubble.
“Howling,' writes Khaled, “doesn't always manifest in screams or tears. Sometimes it manifests as cold dullness. Evacuation notices drop on doors like inane announcements, read by people with blank eyes and then go on with their lives: a man arguing with his neighbor over a gallon of water, women fighting over a turn at the oven, a young man fixing a crack in the wall. It's as if the announcement of the city's destruction means nothing, as if the preordained mass exodus is just another rumor.”
“This isn't true indifference,” she believes, “but another form of howling: a hidden protection against total collapse. When a person is unable to face the naked truth, they hide in the small details, clinging to crumbs to prevent their souls from disintegrating. Politics isn't content with killing bodies; it seeks to break the inside, to make people treat their end as secondary news. It wants evacuation itself to become a habit, a weightless piece of paper, part of the daily noise.”
Israel has ordered everyone in Gaza City to evacuate to the al-Mawasi tent encampment in the south. But the camp is severely overcrowded with hundreds of thousands of displaced people from Rafah, Khan Younis, and other areas and there is no available land. Nor is it rent free, as others I am in touch with tell me. The entirety of Gaza's most southern city, Rafah, once home to 250,000 people, was razed to the ground earlier this year. Khan Younis was razed in part, but some neighborhoods remain.
As for Khaled and her family, refusing to be broken or adhere exactly to Israeli orders, they moved to Deir al-Balah, a city about 10 miles south of Gaza City. They're not safe there, but at least they found land to set up tents. Khaled has already started looking for a new place to establish a school. This morning she reposted a link for the school, which is backed by the Chuffed Project, a nonprofit whose goal is to support children's education in Gaza
Her goal, other than giving as many students as possible the right to education, is to instill one idea in the children of Gaza “so that they may travel the world and spread peace one day. Plant a rose on the tip of every gun. Prevent killing. Spread love and peace and never allow war to continue for long.”
It doesn't mean she's not always hungry or trying to recover her voice or understand why such hell has been unleashed on her people. But that she refuses to surrender to the “twisted logic that turns life into a farce. My voice has been extinguished, not because it disappeared, but because the echo no longer returns. And my being? I've scattered like dust, like a ravening beast that isn't satisfied with flesh and bones, but burrows deep within me in search of something I no longer know the name of. Yes, I'm hungry, but not just for bread. I'm hungry for the security that has become a myth, for the meaning that has become a mirage, for a slice of life that resembles life, not this mockery I live.”
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'Gaza Is Being Obliterated,' Says Top UN Official, as World Leaders Stand Aside
"There is no safe place in Gaza, let alone a humanitarian zone," said UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini. "It is a large and growing camp concentrating hungry Palestinians in despair."
Sep 09, 2025
A top United Nations official on Tuesday called out the international community for continuing to let the Israeli military decimate civilian infrastructure in Gaza and massacre human beings with impunity.
Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), wrote in a social media post that Israel was making Gaza unlivable, and he slammed the country for ordering Palestinians to evacuate from Gaza City given that nowhere in the enclave appears safe from its bombing campaigns.
"Gaza is being obliterated, reduced to a wasteland," he wrote. "Gaza is being emptied from its starving population forced to move into the so called 'humanitarian' area of Mawasi. There is no safe place in Gaza, let alone a humanitarian zone. It is a large and growing camp concentrating hungry Palestinians in despair."
He then turned his ire toward other nations who have continued to sit idly by as the destruction of Gaza worsens.
"Warnings of famine have fallen on deaf ears," he said. "Will warnings of this deepening catastrophe also fall on deaf ears? Cease-fire, before it is way too late. End the impunity before atrocities become the new norm."
Lazzarini was not the only observer of the Gaza conflict to raise alarms about Israel's actions on Tuesday.
Kenneth Roth, the former executive director of Human Rights Watch, highlighted Israel's Monday destruction of Gaza City's Al-Ru'ya Commercial Tower—which was home to human rights organizations, aid groups, childcare centers, and other civil society groups—to argue that Israel is deliberately destroying civilian infrastructure in the city as a pretext for ethnically cleansing all of Gaza. Israel has brought a series of high-rise buildings to the ground with targeted missile strikes this week.
"Israel keeps blatantly destroying the civilian infrastructure of Gaza with barely a pretense of attacking Hamas," he said. "This is about rendering Gaza unlivable to justify (on 'humanitarian' grounds) the mass forced deportation of two million Palestinians."
Nicola Perugini, an anthropologist and political scientist at the University of Edinburgh, noted that Israel has already "destroyed 80% of civil defense equipment," which he said was being done to "maximize civilian casualties" in Gaza.
On Tuesday, a mass exodus from Gaza City was underway as Palestinian civilians attempted to flee following evacuation orders for the entirety of the city that were given by the Israeli military.
"Staying in the city is extremely dangerous," Avichay Adraee, a spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces, said on social media.
Independent journalist Sharif Abdel Kouddous responded to the IDF threat by saying, "There it is. Israel's military order to ethnically cleanse all of Gaza City of Palestinians."
The latest Gaza developments come just days after several UN experts, including United Nations special rapporteur Francesca Albanese, demanded the UN General Assembly convene to pressure Israel to end its siege of Gaza, which has caused famine and starvation in the enclave.
"Israel must immediately end its obstruction of safe, effective and dignified humanitarian assistance," they said. "But lifting these restrictions alone will not be enough to save Gaza's devastated population. What is urgently required is an end to Israel's siege and the declaration of an immediate ceasefire. At this critical moment, the world needs the General Assembly—the highest body of the United Nations—to take decisive leadership and act to prevent further catastrophe."
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As Press Freedom Groups Decry Latest 'Murder' of Journalists by Israel, Fury Grows Over Impunity
"Israel's broadcasted killing of journalists in Gaza continues while the world watches and fails to act firmly on the most horrific attacks the press has ever faced in recent history," said one press freedom advocate.
Aug 25, 2025
Israel is drawing harsh criticism after it launched a pair of strikes at Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza on Monday that left at least 20 people dead, including journalists and healthcare workers.
As reported by CNN, Israel launched "back-to-back strikes on the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis" that were "separated by only a matter of minutes." The second strike killed some emergency crew members who had rushed to the scene in the wake of the first strike.
The strikes drew immediate condemnation from press freedom groups who accused Israel of intentionally attacking reporters in Gaza and dismissed claims by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the strikes were a "tragic mishap."
Thibaut Bruttin, the director general of Reporters Without Borders, said Israel attacked the journalists in an attempt to prevent them from delivering news about the famine in Gaza.
"How far will the Israeli armed forces go in their gradual effort to eliminate information coming from Gaza?" he asked. "How long will they continue to defy international humanitarian law? The protection of journalists is guaranteed by international law, yet more than 200 of them have been killed by Israeli forces in Gaza over the past two years."
He then called upon the United Nations Security Council to set an emergency meeting to enact "concrete measures... to end impunity for crimes against journalists, protect Palestinian journalists, and open access to the Gaza Strip to all reporters."
Sara Qudah, regional director at the Committee to Protect Journalists, called out the international community for letting Israel get away with launching military strikes against reporters.
"Israel's broadcasted killing of journalists in Gaza continues while the world watches and fails to act firmly on the most horrific attacks the press has ever faced in recent history," she said. "These murders must end now. The perpetrators must no longer be allowed to act with impunity."
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) accused Israel of "silencing the last remaining voices reporting about children dying silently amid famine" in Gaza, while charging the international community with reacting with "indifference and inaction."
"This cannot be our future new norm," said UNRWA. "Compassion must prevail. Let us undo this man-made famine by opening the gates without restrictions [and] protecting journalists, humanitarian and health workers. Time for political will. Not tomorrow, now."
Former New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan said that her fellow journalists needed to hold the Israeli government to account for its actions.
"Journalists everywhere need to stand in solidarity on this killing spree and resulting news blackout," she wrote on Bluesky.
And Drop Site News' Ryan Grim ripped into Netanyahu's claim that his government "deeply regrets the tragic mishap" that occurred at the hospital.
"Israel deeply regrets the tragic mishap of striking a hospital and then waiting 17 minutes until rescue workers gathered and striking it again," Grim commented sarcastically on X.
Israel has previously claimed that attacks on so-called "safe zones" and on aid workers were mistakes.
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'A Cruel and Transparent Farce': Israeli Attacks Kill 62 in Gaza Amid 'Tactical Pause'
"There is nothing humane or tactical about letting a trickle of aid in after a man-made famine has started while continuing to bomb starving men, women, and children, even in so-called safe zones," one advocate said.
Jul 27, 2025
The Israeli military began instituting tactical pauses in its assault on certain sections of Gaza on Sunday, as part of a plan to allow what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described as "minimal humanitarian supplies" to enter the besieged enclave.
Several humanitarian organizations and political leaders described the Israeli approach as vastly insufficient at best and a dangerous distraction at worst, as Palestinians in Gaza continue to die of starvation that experts say has been deliberately imposed on them by the U.S.-backed Israeli military.
"Deadly airdrops and a trickle of trucks won't undo months of engineered starvation in Gaza," Bushra Khalidi, Oxfam policy lead for the Occupied Palestinian territory, said in a statement on Sunday. "What's needed is the immediate opening of all crossings for full, unhindered, and safe aid delivery across all of Gaza and a permanent cease-fire. Anything less risks being little more than a tactical gesture."
Israel announced a plan to institute a daily 10-hour "tactical pause" in fighting from 10:00 am to 8:00 pm local time in the populated Gaza localities of Gaza City, Deir al-Balah, and Muwasi, as The Associated Press explained.
"These actions are not pauses—they are part of an ongoing genocide that the world must act to stop."
However, on Sunday—the first day of the supposed pause—Israeli attacks killed a total of 62 people, Al Jazeera reported, including 34 who were seeking humanitarian relief. Another six people died of hunger, bringing the total death toll from starvation and malnutrition to 133, including 87 children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
"The Israeli government's so-called 'tactical pauses' are a cruel and transparent farce," said Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) national deputy director Edward Ahmed Mitchell in a statement on Sunday. "There is nothing humane or tactical about letting a trickle of aid in after a man-made famine has started while continuing to bomb starving men, women, and children, even in so-called safe zones. These actions are not pauses—they are part of an ongoing genocide that the world must act to stop."
British Foreign Secretary David Lammy, meanwhile, called the pause "essential, but long overdue."
"This announcement alone cannot alleviate the needs of those desperately suffering in Gaza," Lammy said, as The Guardian reported. "We need a cease-fire that can end the war, for hostages to be released, and aid to enter Gaza by land unhindered."
The United Nations' World Food Program posted on social media that it welcomed the news of the pause, as well as the creation of more humanitarian corridors for aid, and that it had enough food supplies either in or en route to the area to feed the entire population of Gaza for nearly three months.
"A man-made hunger can only be addressed by political will."
Since the border crossings opened on May 27 following nearly three months of total siege, WFP has only been able to bring in 22,000 tons of food aid, about a third of the over 62,000 tons of food aid needed to feed the population of Gaza each month.
While it welcomed the pause, WFP did add that "an agreed cease-fire is the only way for humanitarian assistance to reach the entire civilian population in Gaza with critical food supplies in a consistent, predictable, orderly, and safe manner—wherever they are across the Gaza Strip."
Joe English, emergency communications specialist for UNICEF, emphasized that the limited pauses proposed by Israel were not the ideal conditions for treating serious malnutrition.
"This is a short turnaround in terms of the notice that we have, and so we cannot work miracles," English told CNN.
English explained that, while UNICEF can treat malnutrition, children who are malnourished require a course of treatments over an extended period of time in order to fully recover, something only truly possible with a cease-fire, which would allow the U.N. to reestablish the 400 aid distribution points it had set up across Gaza before the last cease-fire ended in March.
"We have to be able to reach people and also to reach people where they are," he said. "We can't be expecting people to continue to traverse many miles, often on foot, through militarized areas, to get access to aid."
In addition to bringing in food aid through trucks, Israel, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates all began air-dropping aid over the weekend. However, this method has been widely criticized by humanitarian experts as ineffective and even dangerous.
"The planes are insulting for us. We are a people who deserve dignity."
"Airdrops will not reverse the deepening starvation. They are expensive, inefficient, and can even kill starving civilians. It is a distraction and screensmoke," U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini wrote on social media on Saturday.
"A man-made hunger can only be addressed by political will. Lift the siege, open the gates, and guarantee safe movements and dignified access to people in need," Lazzarini wrote.
Palestinians in Gaza also complained about the air drops.
"From 6:00 am until now we didn't eat or drink. We didn't get aid from the trucks. After that, they said that planes will airdrop aid, so we waited for that as well," Massad Ghaban told Reuters. "The planes are insulting for us. We are a people who deserve dignity."
In a reminder of what is at stake in effectively delivering aid to Gaza, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned on Sunday that "malnutrition is on a dangerous trajectory in the Gaza Strip, marked by a spike in deaths in July."
WHO continued:
Of 74 malnutrition-related deaths in 2025, 63 occurred in July—including 24 children under 5, a child over 5, and 38 adults. Most of these people were declared dead on arrival at health facilities or died shortly after, their bodies showing clear signs of severe wasting. The crisis remains entirely preventable. Deliberate blocking and delay of large-scale food, health, and humanitarian aid has cost many lives.
WHO said that the search for lifesaving aid was itself deadly: "Families are being forced to risk their lives for a handful of food, often under dangerous and chaotic conditions. Since 27 May, more than 1,060 people have been killed and 7,200 injured while trying to access food."
Israeli solders have reported that they had been ordered to fire on Palestinian civilians seeking aid.
In the face of Israel's atrocities, CAIR's Mitchell called for decisive action: "No more statements. Our government, Western nations, and Arab Muslim nations must act immediately to end the genocide, allow unfettered humanitarian aid into Gaza, secure the release of all captives and political prisoners, and hold Israeli leaders accountable for war crimes. Every moment of inaction contributes to the unimaginable suffering of everyone in Gaza."
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