By Topher L. McDougal
International aid groups are warning that they cannot deliver food and other basic services to people in the Gaza Strip and that a “dire” humanitarian crisis is set to worsen.
International aid groups provide food and other means of support to about 63% of people in Gaza.
Israel stopped allowing deliveries of food, fuel and other supplies to Gaza’s 2.3 million residents on Oct. 10, 2023, and is reportedly preparing for a ground invasion.
On Oct. 12, 2023, Israel warned 1.1 million Gaza residents in the northern section of the enclave to leave for the southern region, in advance of a potential ground invasion.
I am a scholar of peace and conflict economics and a former World Bank consultant, including during the 2014 war between Hamas and Israel.
International aid groups now face the same problem in Gaza that local businesses and residents have encountered for about 16 years: a blockade that prevents civilians and items, like medicine from easily moving into or out of the enclosed area, roughly 25 miles long. That 16-year blockade did not apply to the food and fuel that groups brought in to Gaza.
Now, it does.
Mahmud Hams/AFP via Getty Images
Gaza’s blockade and economy
Gaza is about the size of Philadelphia and requires trade with different businesses and countries in order to maintain and grow its economy.
But Gaza is heavily dependent on foreign aid.
This is partially the result of Israel setting up permanent air, land and sea blockades around Gaza in 2007, one year after Hamas rose to political power. Egypt, which borders Gaza on its southern end, also oversees one checkpoint that specifically limits people coming and going.
While Israel has granted permits to about 17,000 Gaza residents to enter and work in Israel, the food, fuel and medical supplies that people in Gaza use all first pass through Israel.
Israel controls two physical checkpoints along Gaza, which monitor both the entry and exit of people and trucks. Israel limits the kind and quantity of materials that pass into Gaza. And the blockades generally prohibit Gazans who do not have work permits or special clearance – for medical purposes, for example – from entering Israel.
Israel’s restrictions through the blockade intensified since Hamas’ surprise attack on 20 Israeli towns and several military bases on Oct. 7, with Israel then announcing a broad blockade of imports into Gaza. This stopped all food, fuel and medical supplies from entering the region.
Gaza’s isolation
The Palestinian enclaves of West Bank and Gaza – which are generally lumped together in economic analyses – both have small economies that run a massive deficit of US$6.6 billion in losses each year, as the value of the imports they receive greatly outweighs the value of the items they produce and sell elsewhere.
More than 53% of Gaza residents were considered below the poverty line in 2020, and about 77% of Gazan households receive some form of aid from the United Nations and other groups, mostly in the form of cash or food.
Gaza’s weak economy is caused by a number of complex factors, but the largest is the blockade and the economic and trade isolation it creates.
For the average Gazan, the blockade has several practical effects, including people’s ability to get food. About 64% of people in Gaza are considered food insecure, meaning they do not have reliable access to sufficient amounts of food.
Food as a percentage of Gaza’s total imports has skyrocketed by 50% since 2005, when Israel first imposed a temporary blockade. And the amount of food the West Bank and Gaza actually produce has tumbled by 30% since then.
It is hard for Gaza to produce food within its own borders. One factor is that Israeli airstrikes hit Gaza’s only power generation plant and main sewage treatment plant in 2008 and again in 2018. These attacks resulted in the spread of sewage waste on land and in the water, destroying farmlands and food crops and threatening fish stocks in the ocean as well.
Mohammed Talatene/picture alliance via Getty Images
The UN’s big role in Gaza
Gaza’s weak economy and isolation because of the blockade mean that it relies heavily on international aid organizations to provide basic services to residents. The biggest of these aid groups in Gaza is the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East – also known as UNRWA.
Today, UNRWA is the second-largest employer in Gaza, following Hamas. It provides the bulk of the education, food aid and health care services for people in Gaza, in addition to 3 million other people registered as Palestinian refugees who live in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and other places.
Over time, UNRWA has evolved into a kind of parallel government, alongside Hamas, which Israel, the United States and other countries designate as a terrorist organization.
UNRWA funds and runs a network of 284 schools in Gaza alone, employing over 9,000 local people as staff and educating over 294,000 children each year.
UNRWA runs 22 hospitals in Gaza that employ almost 1,000 health staff and has 3.3 million patient visits per year.
Its schools are converted into humanitarian shelters in times of crisis, such as the current war. People can go there to get clean water, food, mattresses and blankets, showers and more.
The number of people in Gaza who are displaced from their homes has quickly risen over the last few days, totaling over 330,000 on Oct. 12, 2023. Over two-thirds of these people are staying in UNRWA schools.
A complicated US relationship
The U.S. has historically been the single-largest funder of UNRWA, a U.N. agency that relies on governments to support its work. The U.S. gave more than $500 million to Palestinians from April 2021 through March 2022, including more than $417 million that went to UNRWA.
U.S. support to UNRWA has fluctuated throughout different presidential administrations.
Total U.S. aid to the West Bank and Gaza peaked at $1 billion in 2009 – after Israel sealed off the territory. It reached $1 billion in annual contributions again in 2013, when former Secretary of State John Kerry helped restart peace talks between Israel and Hamas.
In 2018, the Trump Administration cut almost all of the money the U.S. typically gives to UNRWA, amounting to roughly 30% of the organization’s total budget.
Defenders of the policy change cited UNRWA-published textbooks that allegedly glorified jihad. UNRWA, for its part, maintained that, as an outside organization, it can only use the educational materials the country it is working in wants.
The Biden administration then restored funding to UNRWA and other organizations helping Palestinians in 2021.
Some Republican politicians have said that UNRWA has “cozied up” to Hamas. And an internal UNRWA ethics committee has accused top staff at the agency of “sexual misconduct, nepotism, retaliation … and other abuses of authority” that created a toxic work environment.
Meanwhile, since the war between Israel and Hamas began on Oct. 8, more than 1,500 Gazans have been killed and more than 5,300 injured, while Hamas attacks have killed more than 1,300 people in Israel and injured about 3,200 others.
International aid groups and European Union officials have called for a humanitarian corridor to be set up in Gaza – meaning a protected path specifically for civilians, aid workers and necessary basic items to pass through safely back and forth from Gaza to Israel and Egypt. So far, there are no clear plans for such a protected pathway.
Topher L. McDougal is Professor of Economic Development and Peacebuilding at the University of San Diego.
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R.S. says
I am a perturbed by Israel’s responding to a war crime by visiting a more monstrous war crime on a defenseless population. I am also perturbed by the one-sided reporting on the part of the mainstream media: we know almost every Jewish victim’s personal aspirations and life history from the media; we know nothing about the individual aspirations and life histories of inmates of Gaza’s open-air prison. If it weren’t for democracynow.org’s balanced reporting, the media would drown out any Palestinian voices that might be heard. Hamas’s deeds are portrayed as coming from a vacuum; but–as The Guardian points out–none of this comes out of the blue. The entering of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the daily shootings by settlers and Israeli military in the occupied West Bank, the jailing of yearly 500 to 700 Palestinian minors in Israeli jails, the shooting of Shireen Abu Akleh without judicial follow-up, the racist rants of Israeli officials on Sky News, and the reference to “human animals” explain much of the reactions on the part of the Hamas. And now the collective punishment of an entire population by an inhumane siege is too disproportionate a response. Seems almost as though the entirety of the world has turned into Kahanists.
Percy's mother says
R.S.
Have you ever visited the area as an impartial observer?
or do you just visit your website of choice to get “balanced reporting”?
Have you ever visited any of the kibbutzim?
Ever been all the way up to the Israeli / Lebanese border?
Ever heard the stories first-hand from both sides?
Thought not.
I have. I have heard the stories and seen the conditions on both sides. Hence, I don’t need a website to give me “balanced reporting”.
Perhaps you should take a trip to that location to get some “balanced truth”.
DaleL says
Israel’s condition for restoring power, fuel, water, and food is simple. Hamas must release the kidnapped hostages. Instead, Hamas has threatened to murder the hostages. According to recent reporting, Hamas targeted elementary schools and a youth center in the Israeli kibbutz of Kfar Sa’ad, to kill as many people as possible, seize hostages and quickly move them into the Gaza Strip.
International pressure should be directed at Hamas and those who have supported Hamas. It is Hamas which has created this hostage situation. Hamas is holding the people of Gaza hostage along with those they kidnapped from Israel.
R.S. says
You are ignoring the young Orthodox who have marched about spitting at Arab Christians; the brash march into Al Aqsa Mosque by Itamar BenGvir and his settler goons, the daily killing of Palestinians of the West Bank by settlers and the Israeli military; the 500 to 700 yearly underage Palestinians jailed without charge, without parental visits, without attorneys in Israeli prisons; the recent death of a Palestinian by hunger strike after being perpetually held without charge; the march of young Jews through East Jerusalem with shouts of “Death to Arabs”; and the destruction of Palestinian homes again and again. What makes this dilemma so fiercely difficult is that Israel is answering the war crime of Hamas with a massive war crime of its own. Settler colonialism is at work in the West Bank and we’re financing it; and another genocide is underway as we speak.
DaleL says
I do not dispute that Israel (the government) has tolerated intolerable behavior by some of its Jewish population. However, that is a separate issue from Gaza and Hamas.
The violence in the West Bank goes both ways. In February this year, two settlers were killed by Palestinians. In response, settlers rampaged and terrorized Palestinians. The Israeli Defense Forces called the actions of the settlers acts of terror. Several Israelis were arrested and prosecuted.
Israel does not have a death penalty. Israel does not take hostages and then murder them. Also consider, many of the Jews in Israel are descended from ancestors who fled from Muslim ruled Arab states around Israel. In 1945, there were nearly one million Jews in the Arab states. Today there are almost none. Gaza at one time had a large Jewish population.
Deborah Coffey says
Um, Israel has lots of Palestinian hostages, as well. Let us not confuse the Palestinians with the Hamas terrorists. The Israelis have captured, imprisoned and killed lots of Palestinians in Gaza and in the West Bank. Get rid of Hamas and Donald J. Netanyahu and his far right wing coalition…and maybe, just maybe, a peaceful solution could be worked out.
Bill C says
Wrong. International pressure should be directed at stopping the hostilities on both sides.
marlee says
Thank you for this most informative article!
The media has been so slanted against the Palestinians.
How can it be “just OK” to treat the Palestinians the way this article
points out?
We are hearing and seeing only one side of this War.
R.S. says
I recommend taking a look at DemocracyNow.org. The news attempts to be balanced; unfortunately, the service is so cash-strapped that the news goes out only once a day on workdays. But, yes, you’re right: the mainstream media ignore the humanity of Gazans completely. It seems that they’ve all turned into Kahanists and, therefore, subscribe to Yoav Gallant’s designation of Palestinians as “human animals.”
Deborah Coffey says
So true.
Atwp says
So part of the world is trying to help the Palistanians and trying to help Israel too. Don’t like Trump but he did cut aid to the unrwa in 2018., good job Trump. This country gave a billion in 2009. The recession was happening or the end of it. The results of the housing market crash. People lost jobs and homes and this country sent that amount of money overseas. Obama was the President during that time. Another billion in 2013. Obama President at that time. Don’t forget 2021, more money sent. Biden the President. We send all this money overseas what about the people in this country? Heed the cries of a foreign land and ignore the cries in our backyard. What a shame.
Sherry says
@atwp. . . while you are at it, lest we forget the massive trump tax break to “BILLIONAIRES” who do everything they can to avoid paying their fair share of income taxes.
Me, I would much rather have my tax money go to the poor and starving. . . regardless of their skin color/nationality than to “tax cheat billionaires”!!!
endless dark money says
that wealthy tax break is 25$ of the entire national debt. All democrats have reduced the deficit while the cons have increased it. They only act like fiscal hawks when they are not in office to sabatoge the other guy and claim he does nothing. Even flagler has over 1 million annually for homeless via taxes, where does it go? Ask the republicon leadership….
As I said before rising up against your oppressor is human nature. Both sides have committed atrocities, more killings wont help. Ending the land, air and sea blockade is necessary for peace.
Pogo says
@Topher L. McDougal
Considering your main area of recently published research:
Modeling the U.S. Firearms Market
The Effects of Civilian Stocks, Legislation, and Crime
Topher L. McDougal, Daniel Montolio, Jurgen Brauer
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/issj.12396?hsCtaTracking=ea1cb8fb-f34d-485e-b01c-823b4f537eb2%7Cf1efd5e4-3a78-4181-be8b-187b41d599aa
Do you find any parallels with the subjects you speak of here?
JO says
“the value of the imports they receive greatly outweighs the value of the items they produce and sell elsewhere”
Exactly!!
CF says
There are no two sides to this story. Palestinians could have had peace if they wanted it. Jews want nothing more than to be left alone.
How’s this for moral equivalence? Jews have a nuclear bomb but don’t use it. If Palestinians acquired a nuke, they would use it.
Pierre Tristam says
Does that make Putin morally superior to Ukrainians?
CF says
Nice whataboutism. Hamas has in its own charter a demand for the destruction of Israel and the death of every Jew. How’s that for equivalence or proportionality? Ukraine wants to be left alone too. Putin and Hamas are both morally bankrupt. If you didn’t know this before last Saturday, you should certainly know it by now. Any defense of either is an indication of that you too are bankrupt of character. But that’s something I’ve known about you for awhile.
Pierre Tristam says
I was not addressing Hamas, whose atrocities are unquestioned. Hams’s precursors did their share of massacres in and demolished my homeland, too. I know their bloodletting firsthand and don’t need your ignorance on that score to calibrate my moral compass. I was Just addressing your logic about moral superiority because of Israel’s alleged restraint from using nukes. The US didn’t use nukes in Vietnam, Afghanistan or Iraq, either. Didn’t make us morally superior, didn’t make our slaughters there any less indefensible. As for restraint in and of itself, that too is absurd, when ascribed to Israel, whose history of disproportion, and unfolding retaliatory war crimes, we are now witnessing anew. There is no moral high ground here, only mass graves.
CF says
Your bothsidesism and moral relativism is flawed. Again… it’s been in the Hamas charter that the Jews have NO RIGHT TO LIVE. All this time Israel has tried to live alongside them. It’s obvious there is no compromise with a religious fundamentalist who is intent on killing you. But you make apologies for them. You ignore all historical attempts at peace from Israel and equate both sides just because both have been violent. It’s absolutely simpleminded.
marlee says
CF…When was the last election in Gaza?
Sherry says
@cf. . . Consider the possibility that if those Jewish people who “just want to be left alone” would just do that without “expanding” into land that is NOT theirs. . . maybe that would be much more possible.
CF says
You ignore the fact that preceding each expansion, Palestinians launched a war against Israel and were defeated. And yet Israel kept leaving them some territory in the hope of finding a lasting peace.
You can’t negotiate with terrorists!!
R.S. says
Labelled so courtesy of the US of A, right? Hamas was legitimately elected and still has had 49 percent support in polls; while the PLO–the other party in Gaza–has a support of 39 percent. But the action to revenge doesn’t differ between either side. And that’s wrong by international law. As the occupier, Israel is obligated to provide for the welfare of the occupied; not doing so also is against international agreements. The West Bank is riddled with settlements; there is no place where Palestinians could have their own state. Israel’s negotiations for peace were regularly done in bad faith.
CF says
No place? There’s one Jewish state and many, many Islamic ones.
ASF says
First the media blames Israel for not letting the Gazans evacuate. Then, they blame Israel for forcing the Gazans to evacuate. It’s the usual regressive/progressive simplistic take on a very complex situation: “Put Israel in a darned if they do and dead if they don’t position.”
The people that are most dangerous to the citizens of Gaza right now are their own elected terrorist leaders–Hamas. They are ordering them to “stay in place” and and using them as Human Shields and “Pallywood” props. As usual…Ho-hum Nothing tpo see in that…Move along.
People who naively or, for prejudiced reasons of their own, justify, enable and reward that calculated and deadly Modus Operandi are complicit with Hamas’s War Crimes.
ASF says
An interesting article: “Hamas Documents Reveal Plans to Target Civilians”–www.algemeiner.com (10-14-2023) by i24news
ASF says
Here’s the position of the those who bash Israel relentlessly for pseudo-political reasons of their own: “Israel is terrible for not letting the Gazans flee to safety–they are trying to ethnically cleanse them!”… while they simultaneously moan, “Israel is terrible for making the Gazans evacuate the Gaza Strip–they are trying to ethnically cleanse them!”
Hamas is using the Palestinian populace as Human Shields as they pursue their Jihadist Jew-hating agenda. Eh, nothing to see there…move along.
Likewise, there’s not much attention being paid in “Anti-Zionist” quarters to the lack of interest other Arab states are displaying towards more materially and actively assisting their Palestinian brethren during this time of crisis. Somehow, it’s Israel’s moral duty to put themselves and their own out on the most precarious limb possible to help out the very people who have been most dedicated to their destruction.
That’s the Modus Operandi: Make Israel forever darned if they do and dead if they don’t. That’s apparently a really enlightened and progressive attitude.
oldtimer says
Ancient Palestine used to include parts of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. I don’t see any of these countries giving back their “occupied lands “I also don’t see them readily taking in the people in Gaza who want to flee the war. Just saying
Sherry says
Bottom Line. . . It’s Extremely Complicated and There is No Clear “Right Position and Wrong Position”. Unfortunately, historically, it all boils down to yet another religious war of “My God is better than Your God”. How very tragic and terrible on so many levels! Our Inhumanity!