UN aid operations in Gaza halted after Israel evacuation orders

United Nations aid operations in Gaza ground to a halt on Monday after Israel issued new evacuation orders on Sunday for Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip where the UN operations center was located, said a senior UN official.

The evacuation order came as the UN prepares to begin on Saturday a campaign to vaccinate an estimated 640,000 children in Gaza, where the World Health Organization (WHO) said a 10-month-old baby had been paralyzed by the type 2 polio virus, the first such case in the territory in 25 years.

"We're unable to deliver today with the conditions that we're in," said the senior UN official, speaking on condition of anonymity. "As of this morning, we're not operating in Gaza."

The United Nations had relocated its main operations center for the Gaza Strip and most UN personnel to Deir Al-Balah, the official said, after Israel ordered the evacuation of Rafah in the south of Gaza several months ago.

"Where do we move now?" said the official, adding that UN staff had to be moved so quickly that equipment was left behind.

The Israeli military's humanitarian unit (COGAT) did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The senior UN official said UN staff on the ground had been directed to try and find a way to keep operating. He said UN operations had not been formally suspended.

"We're not leaving (Gaza) because the people need us there," the official said. "We're trying to balance the need of the population with the need for safety and security of the UN personnel."

Sam Rose, a senior field director for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), said UNRWA was still managing to deliver health and other services on Monday, but noted that while UNRWA operated differently from the rest of the UN system it still faced the same challenges.

"We are being squeezed into ever smaller areas of Gaza," he told reporters on Monday. "The humanitarian zone declared by Israel has shrunk. It's now about 11 percent of the entire Gaza Strip. But this isn't 11 percent of land that is fit for habitation, fit for services, fit for life."

Food aid halved

The current war in the Gaza Strip began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas gunmen stormed into Israeli communities, killing around 1,200 people and abducting about 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

Since then, Israel's military has leveled swathes of the Palestinian enclave, destroying homes, hospitals and schools. The bombardment has internally displaced nearly 2.3 million people, giving rise to deadly hunger and disease and killing more than 40,000 people, according to Palestinian health authorities.

"The humanitarian response here is being completely strangled and limiting our ability of what we can do," said Louise Wateridge, spokesperson for UNRWA in Gaza, on Monday.

The UN has long complained of obstacles to getting aid into Gaza – Israel inspects and approves all trucks – and says it is also struggling to distribute aid amid "total lawlessness" within the enclave of 2.3 million people, where a global hunger monitor last month said there is a high risk of famine.

The UN World Food Program (WFP) said on Monday that in the past two months it "managed to bring in only half of the 24,000 metric tonnes of food aid required for operations serving 1.1 million people." WFP said it was hampered by worsening conflict, a limited number of border crossings and damaged roads.

Rose said that more than 3,000 people would work on the polio vaccination campaign that is due to start on Saturday.

"Over 1,000 of them drawn from UNRWA, which is essentially the largest primary health care provider left in the Gaza Strip. The vaccines have come in. We're calling for calm. We're calling for humanitarian pauses," he said.