Looting deepens Gaza misery as famine looms, says UNRWA official

NICOSIA (Reuters) – A humanitarian disaster in Gaza is being deepened by a total breakdown in law and order and the conflict between Israel and Hamas is rendering the enclave uninhabitable, a senior official of the main U.N. aid agency there, UNRWA, said on Friday.

UNRWA official Natalie Boucly also said arrest warrants issued against senior Israeli politicians as well as a leader of Hamas by an international tribunal 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.”

Speaking at a conference in Cyprus, Boucly said 500 trucks of pre-war aid entering the Palestinian enclave daily had now fallen to 37, with those supplies now at risk of looting by criminal gangs.

Nearly 100 trucks carrying food for Palestinians were violently looted on Nov. 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. The issuance of the ICC arrest warrants yesterday against three individuals is the start of that accountability,” she said.

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, 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.

(Reporting by Michele Kambas, Editing by William Maclean)