The Commissioner-General of UNRWA has issued a stark warning, describing the starvation and siege in Gaza as part of a systematic effort to uproot Palestinians from their land. After over 20 months of international silence and inaction, he said the crisis reflects a deliberate strategy to erase Palestinian identity through blockade, displacement, and despair.

Gaza’s borders remain tightly sealed, with vital food and medical supplies piling up just beyond reach. Meanwhile, more than two million people are trapped in worsening hunger. The Commissioner-General called it a “shameful” and manufactured catastrophe, unfolding under the passive gaze of a watching world.

He also highlighted Israel’s accelerating settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank, describing it as a de facto annexation aimed at extinguishing any future Palestinian state. Across the region, refugees are being marginalised, denied their rights and dignity, and abandoned by the international system meant to protect them.

“What we are witnessing today is not just a humanitarian emergency,” he said. “It is an organised crime, one designed to sever an entire people from their land, their memory, and their future.”

He urged the international community to go beyond condemnation and take meaningful steps to hold those responsible to account, before the erasure of Palestine becomes irreversible.