Let UNRWA Work: Stop the Engineered Starvation of Gaza
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
The rapidly escalating—and entirely preventable—humanitarian catastrophe in the Gaza Strip is driven by deliberate political choices.
Today, Palestinian families in Gaza are starving while trucks full of food sit just miles away, blocked at the border. The United States and Israel conceived of and continue to back the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a political aid scheme created to allegedly replace the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) and its UN aid partners and exert control over Gaza. It is failing catastrophically.
GHF was never meant to save lives. It was built by Israel and the United States to sideline UNRWA, weaponize hunger and aid distribution, and force Palestinians into a shrinking area of Gaza near the Egyptian border, ahead of mass expulsion.
Israel and GHF’s stated plan restricts aid to a handful of distribution points—”camps”—where Gaza’s starving, injured, and traumatized population is being forcibly concentrated. We have witnessed the horrifying consequences of this strategy: harrowing, chaotic scenes of Palestinians walking miles in search of food, only to be corralled into fenced pens like animals and shot by the Israeli military.
There is nothing humanitarian about GHF. It is a deathtrap.
Israeli Minister of Finance Belzeal Smotrich admitted the quiet part out loud when he explained that the Israeli military is carrying out a campaign to “concentrate” Palestinians in the south of Gaza, so they can, in his words, “from there, God willing, [be removed] to third countries, as part of President Trump’s plan.”
Before this system was imposed, UNRWA operated 400 food distribution sites across Gaza—part of the largest, uninterrupted UN food operation anywhere on the planet, that has successfully functioned for 75 years. Today, GHF operates just four. And at those few locations, starving, beleaguered Palestinians are being shot and killed while waiting for food for their families.
GHF was never designed to meet humanitarian needs. It was designed to sideline UNRWA, the only agency with the local staff, supply chains, experience, and trust to deliver life-saving aid in Gaza. And open the door for what looks dangerously like ethnic cleansing under the guise of a humanitarian response. Since GHF began its efforts in May 2025, over 1,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli soldiers and US mercenaries at distribution sites.
Even US and Israeli intelligence veterans are sounding the alarm. 28-year CIA veteran Paul Pillar has said, “The limitation of aid to a few distribution points facilitates the forced relocation of surviving Gazans into what amounts to a concentration camp.”
UNRWA, meanwhile, is on the ground in Gaza, ready, willing and able. With over 12,000 trusted Palestinian staff in Gaza alone, pre-positioned supplies, and seven decades of proven operational experience, UNRWA is the only agency capable of responding at the scale this moment demands and preventing mass starvation—if allowed to do its job.
As the United Nations has made clear, GHF is a “distraction from what is actually needed”: full, unfettered entry of aid, delivered through trusted, experienced agencies like UNRWA.
“We are seeing engineered mass starvation in Gaza,” said Mara Kronenfeld, Executive Director of UNRWA USA. “GHF is not a humanitarian actor, it is a PR stunt at best and a killing machine at worst. We have heard chilling testimony from former Green Beret Anthony Aguilar who witnessed atrocities committed against Palestinian civilians during his time working under GHF in Gaza. UNRWA and its UN partners must be allowed to do their essential jobs which are providing full throated access to humanitarian aid that is both principled and that can reach the whole of the Gaza strip at scale. Such a change must take place immediately before the blood of up to two million people, including one million children, is on all of our hands.”
More than 124 humanitarian organizations and 65 members of the US Congress now support the UNRWA Funding Emergency Restoration Act of 2025. The public is paying attention. The lies are unraveling. The cracks are visible.
We urge the White House and all elected leaders to act—now—before more precious lives are taken.
We call on the American public and all people of conscience everywhere to demand:
Lift all restrictions on UNRWA’s operations
Fully restore U.S. government funding to UNRWA
Let UNRWA do its job and prevent mass starvation
This is not a moment for experiments. Every hour of inaction costs lives.
Let UNRWA work. Let the food through. Before more Palestinians die.
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UNRWA USA National Committee (UNRWA USA) is an independent nonprofit organization that provides support for the humanitarian work of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). UNRWA USA lifts up the voices, experiences, and humanity of Palestine refugees to secure American support for resources essential to every human being, for the promise of a better life. US taxpayers are eligible for tax deductions for donations made through UNRWA USA.
Media Contact: For more information, contact Laila Mokhiber, Senior Director of Communications, UNRWA USA, by phone at (202) 223-3767 or via email at laila@unrwausa.org.