Mr. John Whyte:

There is a fair bit in that. As I said earlier, UNWRA has about 12,000 staff so we have reach. We are working in a very narrow area but the issue is having resources to give to people. At the moment we can do face-to-face work, psycho-social support and engagement. We get a limited amount of supplies from partners that are able to bring in their supplies. In terms of the supplies we have outside, we are focusing on giving them to partners to bring in on our behalf but they are being told, quietly, not to give them back to UNRWA. We are being squeezed in every respect. The challenge then, once goods and supplies get in through Kerem Shalom, is that they have to go through Gaza without public order and with a starving population so almost everything is being looted almost immediately. There are formidable challenges. People are desperate. What would I do if I was in that situation and I had to feed my family and there was nothing, except what was coming in on a few scattered trucks? That really influences almost everything. What happens then is that it is looted, some of it finds its way to the market and people then have to pay hiked-up prices for it. It is very difficult to try to manage. There has not really been meat, vegetables or fruit for months or, at best, there are very limited supplies that are far too expensive.

I speak about the humanitarian zone which most of the people are being crowded into now but that is not humanitarian and it is not safe because it is still experiencing attacks on a daily basis. As I said earlier, nowhere is safe. Nowhere is safe for our staff and the people. There are no limits, really, to this war. We have seen the recognition by several UN member states of Palestine in recent days and of course, there is always an adverse reaction to that. The Israelis step things up because they want to make a point. This is how they see things and what we are seeing is a steady deterioration. Gaza city is now being systematically levelled. The north and south have already been levelled and now people are being squeezed from the north into the south and from there, who knows? The pressure is unrelenting. I said earlier that many people have chosen to stay because they just have nowhere to go. They are taking their chances where they are.