Gaza Herald_ United States top diplomat Marco Rubio said that the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) “is not going to play any role” in aid delivery in Gaza, while also rejecting any possibility of Hamas participating in the future governance of the Strip.
Speaking during a news conference in Israel on Friday, the US Secretary of State claimed that UNRWA had become “a subsidiary of Hamas,” echoing an Israeli government accusation that has been discredited by the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
In response, UNRWA reaffirmed that its presence “remains vital to meeting urgent humanitarian needs” across the besieged and starved enclave, where a deadly Israeli offensive has killed more than 68,000 Palestinians over the past two years.
In a statement posted on X, the agency also underscored that the ICJ had recognized that “no organization can replace UNRWA’s role in supporting the people of Gaza.”
Farhan Haq, the deputy spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General, also dismissed Rubio’s remarks. “You’ve already heard us say that UNRWA is not linked to Hamas,” he told reporters at the UN. “UNRWA is the backbone of our humanitarian operations in Gaza.”
Israel banned the agency from operating after accusing some of its staff of taking part in the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack without providing evidence.
Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh described Rubio’s claim that UNRWA was a Hamas “subsidiary” as “quite shocking” and “devastating” for the agency and all those involved in Gaza’s humanitarian response.
Odeh noted that UNRWA had not only been exonerated by the ICJ and two independent commissions of inquiry but also maintains the most extensive aid infrastructure in Gaza.
“It has thousands of employees, it has the data to distribute aid to Palestinians with dignity and in an orderly fashion,” she said. “Nobody has that kind of infrastructure or history in Gaza.”
Despite a US-mediated ceasefire that took effect earlier this month, Israel has continued attacks across Gaza. At least two people were killed in shelling east of Deir el-Balah in central Gaza on Friday, according to medical sources at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.
Israel has also kept the Rafah crossing near Egypt sealed, blocking large-scale aid deliveries that were guaranteed under the truce agreement.
In his remarks on Friday, Rubio said he hoped to assemble an international security force soon to oversee the ceasefire in Gaza and noted that Israel, which opposes the inclusion of Turkiye, could veto participating states.
The force, he added, must consist of countries that Israel is “comfortable with.”
NATO member Turkiye, one of the most vocal critics of Israel’s war on Gaza, has joined the ceasefire negotiations as a mediator after largely indirect involvement. Its expanded role followed a meeting last month between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and US President Donald Trump at the White House.
Erdoğan said on Friday that talks on the proposed force are still ongoing and that “the modalities of this are not yet clear.”
“We are ready to provide Gaza with any form of support on this issue,” he added.
Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim-majority country, has also expressed readiness to send troops to Gaza. The United Arab Emirates, which normalized ties with Israel in 2020, has already taken part in ceasefire monitoring.
‘Daily Struggle for Survival’
Rubio said that any potential role for the Palestinian Authority (PA) in Gaza’s future administration remains undecided. However, Palestinian factions, including the PA, announced on Friday that they had agreed to form an independent technocratic committee to govern Gaza temporarily.
During a meeting in Cairo, the factions agreed to hand “the administration of the Gaza Strip to a temporary Palestinian committee composed of independent technocrats, which will manage daily affairs and basic services in coordination with Arab partners and international institutions.”
Husam Badran, the head of Hamas’s national relations and a member of its political bureau, said that all Palestinian factions shared a “unified vision” for implementing the agreement in a way that serves the interests of the Palestinian people.
Meanwhile, the situation on the ground remains catastrophic for Gaza’s 2.1 million residents, most of whom have been displaced multiple times.
Mahmoud Basal, the spokesperson for Gaza’s Civil Defense, said that homes remain destroyed, bodies are still trapped beneath the rubble, and roads are blocked by debris.
He added that teams continue to work with almost no resources amid “massive devastation that covers every corner of the Strip.”
In a separate statement, Civil Defense urged residents to avoid staying in buildings damaged by Israeli bombings after one structure collapsed on civilians in Gaza City.
Some families have begun returning to their homes in northern Gaza, finding “nothing but ruins” as they face what Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud described as a “daily struggle for survival.”
Reporting from Gaza City, Mahmoud said that people are returning to “only the skeletons of buildings.”
“There is nothing inside, no access to water, no access to food supplies. We’ve seen people walk for hours, sometimes days, in search of flour, lentils, or canned food to survive these desperate conditions.”
UN spokesperson Haq reiterated that Israel must allow in “more [aid] trucks at more crossing points,” noting that aid levels remain far below what was agreed under the ceasefire.
He said that at no point since the truce took effect have 600 UN trucks, the minimum daily requirement, entered Gaza.
The World Health Organization also reported that there has been little improvement in aid deliveries and no observable reduction in hunger.
“The situation remains catastrophic because what’s entering is not enough,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
Hamas said on Friday that it had received “clear guarantees” from mediators Egypt, Qatar, and Turkiye that “the war has effectively ended,” and urged greater international pressure on Israel to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza.
