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Israel blocks 5,000 UNRWA trucks from entering Gaza: UN official

Iran Press TV

Monday, 10 November 2025 6:12 PM

About 5,000 UNRWA-owned trucks carrying humanitarian aid remain blocked from entering Gaza, a senior UN official said on Monday, underscoring the severe difficulties of delivering relief to the famine-hit territory.

UNRWA's senior deputy director for Gaza operations, John Whyte, said Israel is refusing to allow the agency's trucks into the besieged strip.

"They just won't let anything that's owned by UNRWA go in," he said, adding that Israel is demanding the removal of UNRWA branding and the transfer of supplies to other relief organizations before entry is permitted.

"So they're requiring us to hand our supplies over to other agencies, who then bring them in. But we also have to take the UNRWA logo off everything, which causes us a lot of hassle."

Last year, Israel banned UNRWA. Since the ban came into effect in January, the UN agency has not been able to operate in the Israeli-occupied territories.

There are still 12,000 UNRWA workers operating in Gaza, but they've been cut off from their colleagues working outside the besieged strip, the UNRWA official added.

"Now, because our staff are in there, they will continue to operate and deliver services, but obviously we are hampered because our supplies are not able to come in," Whyte said.

In addition to the law banning UNRWA, Israel has more recently imposed new restrictions on other aid agencies and international NGOs, demanding they disclose sensitive information about their Palestinian employees.

Some organizations have refused to do so, facing de-registration, meaning they cannot operate in Palestine.

"All of this is trying to just undermine the humanitarian effort, which has been the case right throughout the war," Whyte said.

The UN official stated that these obstacles are part of Israel's use of humanitarian aid as a weapon of war, and serve as evidence that Israel is "really trying to undermine every facet of Palestinian life in Gaza and to make the place unlivable, to the extent that they have almost succeeded in that."

The primary target of Israeli restrictions has been UNRWA, the UN organization that essentially acts as a civil service for Palestinian refugees in Gaza, the occupied West Bank, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan.

UNRWA was founded in 1949 following the Nakba (Catastrophe), when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forced from their homes by the occupying regime.

Many of those refugees make up large portions of the populations in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, living in refugee camps supported by the aid agency.

Last month, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered Israel to allow the delivery of humanitarian aid into the besieged Gaza Strip, underscoring its legal obligation as an occupying entity to ensure Palestinians have access to essential goods for survival.

ICJ President Yuji Iwasawa further stressed that Israel must "agree to and facilitate relief schemes provided by the United Nations and its entities," including UNRWA.

The Hamas resistance movement has reiterated that Israel is failing to uphold the terms of the Gaza ceasefire agreement by refusing to reopen the crucial Rafah border crossing with Egypt.