A complete breakdown of law and order and the conflict between Israel and Hamas is deepening the humanitarian disaster in Gaza.
A senior official of UNRWA, the main U.N. aid agency there, said on Friday that the situation has rendered the enclave uninhabitable.
UNRWA official Natalie Boucly explained the implications of the arrest warrants issued against senior Israeli politicians and a Hamas leader by an international tribunal.
Natalie said that this meant there would be a reckoning for the suffering inflicted on millions.
“Basically the entire population of Gaza are in desperate need of assistance amid a looming famine,” said Boucly, UNRWA’s deputy commissioner-general, programmes and partnerships.
Israel’s Parliament passed a law last month that will ban UNRWA from operating in the country when it takes effect in late January.
UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini has said its implementation “will have catastrophic consequences.”
Boucly said at a conference in Cyprus that 500 trucks of pre-war aid entering the Palestinian enclave daily had now fallen to 37.
These supplies face the risk of looting by criminal gangs.
Nearly 100 trucks carrying food for Palestinians were violently looted on November 16 after entering Gaza in one of the worst aid losses during 13 months of war in the enclave.
“Gaza has become uninhabitable,” she said, calling the situation a failure of humanity.
“There has to be accountability for all the grave violations of international law that are occurring,” she said,
She added that the issuance of the ICC arrest warrants against three individuals is the start of that accountability.
The International Criminal Court issued warrants on Thursday for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant and Hamas military leader Ibrahim Al-Masri, commonly known as Mohammed Deif.
The warrants were issued for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Israel says Hamas is to blame for all harm to Gaza’s civilians, for operating among them, which the Palestinian group denies.
