‘We will suffocate’: Palestinian refugees in Gaza fear UNRWA ban

With the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) ordered to cease operations in Israel and the occupied territory on Thursday, many Palestinians dread the implications on their lives and future.For the duration of Israel’s 15-month war on Gaza, which has uprooted most of its population and reduced most of the enclave to rubble, UNRWA was a critical lifeline of support for the 2.3 million stranded Palestinians, even as humanitarian supplies dwindled.

Besides UNRWA’s critical humanitarian role, refugees – who account for 71 percent of Gaza’s population – fear they will be left without a link to their family’s original homes or a right to ever return to the land that was once historic Palestine and is now Israel.

Since its creation in 1949 to serve and handle the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians forcibly displaced by Israel’s creation a year earlier, UNRWA has symbolised the hope of refugees to return home.

Sitting in front of the remnants of his destroyed home in Khan Younis, 74-year-old Abu Nael Hamouda describes UNRWA as “a lifeline across generations” – one that has provided education, healthcare and food in times of peace and war alike.

“UNRWA is the lung that Palestinian refugees breathe from,” says Hamouda, who himself originally hails from what was once the Palestinian town of Majdal. He was forced to evacuate from Majdal as a child, as it became part of Ashkelon in Israel.

“Without it, we would suffocate. My children and grandchildren went to UNRWA’s schools, we were treated in UNRWA hospitals, and it helped us put roofs over our heads.”