JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
It's winter, and Palestinians across Gaza are starving and cold without enough food or shelter. Aid groups say Israel is not letting enough supplies into Gaza. Armed gangs are also stealing the aid that is trickling in. NPR correspondent Aya Batrawy spoke with two U.N. agencies tasked with aiding people in Gaza. And heads up - there will be the sound of gunfire in the story.
AYA BATRAWY, BYLINE: Looting is happening daily in Gaza in areas under Israel's watch, even by Israeli checkpoints. It's so frequent that videos of aid being stolen are widely shared online.
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BATRAWY: In this video, verified by NPR, gunshots ring out as men carrying bags of flour stolen off aid trucks walk past people without food, living in tents. The World Food Programme says the flour was stolen off a 50-truck U.N. convoy last week.
CARL SKAU: We are reaching the end of the line in a way. It's becoming nearly impossible to deliver in southern Gaza because this breakdown of any order.
BATRAWY: Carl Skau is the deputy director of the World Food Programme. Thousands of tons of U.N. aid has been stolen by armed gangs in recent months. Now, it's up to police in Gaza to secure the aid routes and warehouses, but hundreds of them have been killed in Israeli air strikes that the military says are necessary to dismantle Hamas, the group it's fighting. The result, says Skau, is U.N. warehouses are empty, and people are starving.
SKAU: I have never seen an operating environment as difficult as the one we're facing now in the south.
BATRAWY: The looting has become so severe in this area - just 35 square miles - that the biggest aid organization in Gaza, UNWRA, the U.N. relief agency for Palestinian refugees, has had to cut back. And now it faces an even bigger challenge. Next month, Israel will ban any form of contact between Israeli officials or its military with UNWRA's staff. The head of UNWRA, Philippe Lazzarini, explains.
PHILIPPE LAZZARINI: We will not be in a position anymore to coordinate our movement whenever we go to Gaza, which will even increase the exposure of our staff, make it even more impossible.
BATRAWY: Israel says UNWRA is infiltrated by Hamas. It accused 12 of the agency's 13,000 employees of being involved in the deadly Hamas-led attack last year on October 7 on Israel. UNWRA fired those accused, but Israel says it's not enough. Israeli government spokesman David Mencer said this to reporters after Israeli lawmakers voted to sever ties with UNWRA.
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DAVID MENCER: Yes, to humanitarian aid, but no to aid for terrorism. The UNWRA organization is infected with terrorism. Unfortunately, it is beyond repair.
BATRAWY: UNWRA's Lazzarini says in this war, it's his agency that's under attack.
LAZZARINI: The reality is that we have 250 staff who have been killed, many of them with a family. We have more than 200 installation which have been hit since the beginning of the war. But beyond that, there is a political objective to dismantle the agency.
BATRAWY: And he believes Israel ultimately wants to strip Palestinians of their refugee status. And he notes UNWRA also operates dozens of health clinics and was running most of Gaza's schools before the war.
LAZZARINI: There is absolutely no international NGO or U.N. agency in the absence of a functioning state which can provide education to hundreds of thousands of girls and boys living in the rubble today - or to take over even the entire primary health system.
BATRAWY: For now, the reality is you're on a ticking time frame of, you know, maybe six weeks. What is the plan?
LAZZARINI: As an agency, we will continue to operate until the day we are not in a position to operate anymore. But this question you have to ask to the government of Israel, if you are preventing the main provider of these critical services to operate, what is your plan B?
BATRAWY: Israel says other aid groups can do UNWRA's work. But the other major player in Gaza, the World Food Programme's Carl Skau, says picking up that slack will be nearly impossible.
SKAU: Frankly, I don't know where this is heading. We want to save lives. We want to get to those who are starving. But of course, there needs to be certain minimum conditions in terms of security. And as I said, I think we are about to reach the end of the line.
BATRAWY: Aid groups say their ability to feed Gaza's 2 million people is collapsing. Aya Batrawy, NPR News, Doha, Qatar. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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