The Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) has strongly criticized the failure of humanitarian operations to deliver food to starving civilians in the Gaza Strip. He called on the Israeli regime to reopen closed land crossings into Gaza to allow the unhindered passage of aid trucks.
As famine continues to claim lives across the besieged enclave, Philippe Lazzarini stated on Friday via a post on X (formerly Twitter) that UNRWA should be leading aid deliveries, given its capacity and long-standing experience in managing humanitarian relief operations efficiently.
In recent days, numerous airdrops have been carried out by the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Egypt, and others in an attempt to ease the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in the besieged strip.
"Airdrops are at least 100 times more costly than trucks. Trucks carry twice as much aid as planes," Lazzarini stated."If there is political will to allow airdrops, which are highly costly, insufficient & inefficient, there should be similar political will to open the road crossings."
Lazzarini warned that the people of Gaza were starving to death and the "only way to respond to the famine is to flood Gaza with assistance."
He said UNRWA is the largest UN agency on the ground. “Today, UNRWA alone has the equivalent of 6,000 trucks of food and medical assistance stuck in Egypt and Jordan.”
Airdrops are at least 100 times more costly than trucks
— Philippe Lazzarini (@UNLazzarini) August 1, 2025
Trucks carry twice as much aid as planes.
If there is political will to allow airdrops - which are highly costly, insufficient & inefficient, there should be similar political will to open the road crossings.
As the…
Lazzarini reminded that the UN had been able to bring in 500 to 600 trucks a day during the brief ceasefire earlier this year.
He said under UN supervision, aid reached the entire population of Gaza in safety and dignity.
"It succeeded to reverse the deepening starvation without any aid diversion," the UNRWA chief stated.
Lazzarini insisted that there is no replacement to UNRWA."No alternative to the UN-coordinated response with UNRWA as the backbone had provided similar results."
The UN official urged the US government and the Israeli regime to allow UNRWA to carry out its mission."Let’s go back to what works and let us do our job."
"This is what people in Gaza need today more than ever, together with a lasting ceasefire," the Commissioner-General of the United Nations' agency concluded in his statement on Friday.
During the previous ceasefire, which began in January and was later broken by Israeli forces in March, UNRWA reported that it had successfully managed to “reverse the deepening hunger” in Gaza. But that fragile progress has since collapsed.
On March 2, 2025, the Israeli regime ordered the closure of Gaza’s main land crossings, cutting off all food, medical, and humanitarian supplies to the territory. According to reports by international human rights organizations, the move has exacerbated the humanitarian catastrophe for Gaza’s 2.3 million residents, many of whom are now surviving on grass, animal feed, or nothing at all. These groups have accused Israel of deliberately using starvation as a weapon of war against the Palestinian population.
Now, after more than 80 days of total blockade, and amid mounting international outrage, only limited aid has reportedly been delivered by the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a controversial organization backed by the U.S. and Israel. Critics say GHF was established to bypass the UN’s longstanding and effective aid infrastructure in Gaza, and it has already been mired in accusations of corruption and politicized distribution.
The failure of the aid mechanism run by GHF to address mass starvation in Gaza has prompted UNRWA to describe it as a “flawed distribution system” violating humanitarian principles by restricting aid to south and central Gaza, requiring Palestinians to walk long distances to collect aid, and only providing limited aid, among other critiques.
The US-Israeli-crafted aid distribution points have been described as"mass death traps” and “slaughterhouses” for starving Gazans.
“Every day, Palestinians are met with carnage in their attempts to receive supplies from the insufficient amount of aid trickling into Gaza,” Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said in a statement.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that the US-backed aid distribution mechanism is “inherently unsafe” and “it is killing people.”
“Any operation that channels desperate civilians into militarized zones is inherently unsafe. It is killing people,” Guterres told reporters.
Guterres said UN-led humanitarian efforts are being “strangled,” aid workers themselves are starving and Israel, as the occupying power, is required to agree to and facilitate aid deliveries into and throughout the Palestinian enclave.
“People are being killed simply trying to feed themselves and their families. The search for food must never be a death sentence,” Guterres added.
The UN estimates that at least 1,373 Palestinians were killed as they tried to access food between May 27 and July 31, 2025.
US contractors said in an interview that they witnessed their colleagues using live fire, stun grenades and pepper spray against civilians during aid distribution inside the GHF sites.
Meanwhile, the overall death count resulting from starvation and malnutrition in Gaza has currently reached 155, including 89 children, and it is projected to escalate rapidly as the siege and the closure of crossings persist.
The World Food Programme (WFP), UNICEF, and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) this week warned that"time was running out" and Gaza stood "on the brink of a full-scale famine."
Since the Israeli regime unleashed its brutal onslaught on Gaza in October 2023, more than 60,300 Palestinians have been killed, mostly women and children.
