The U.N. agency that has been aiding Palestinian refugees for the past 74 years said on Thursday that it had begun to significantly reduce its operations in the Gaza Strip after nearly exhausting its fuel reserves, exacerbating a humanitarian crisis that the agency’s top official described as “hell on Earth.”
The United Nations Relief Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees, or UNRWA, said in a statement that it had to reduce water supplies, as well as to cut down on fuel it provided to power generators, medical centers and bakeries.
“We can skimp or ration to an extent, and we have bought ourselves some more hours doing this,” Hector Sharp, the UNRWA head of field legal office, said from Gaza. But Gaza will run out of fuel at some point and “the world will, I hope, sit up and say, ‘We are going to send fuel.’ But it will be too late.”
Here’s a closer look at the organization and its work.
Why was UNRWA set up?
Originally intended to provide temporary relief, UNRWA was established in 1949 to assist Palestinians who fled or were expelled from their homes during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Palestinians are the only refugee group whose support is not handled under the broader mandate of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
The agency has been operating in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, West Bank and the Gaza Strip, providing health care, food, jobs, emergency loans, housing assistance and education to millions of Palestinians. It is funded almost entirely by voluntary donations by U.N. member states, with the United States and the European Union countries providing most of the financing.
What is UNRWA’s relationship with Israel?
Israel has objected to UNRWA’s definition of Palestinians as refugees, and has been especially vocal against extending that category to those born in the Gaza Strip. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went as far as to call for the disbanding of UNRWA, accusing it of perpetuating rather than solving the Palestinian “refugee problem.”
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