He called on the Israeli regime to resume the intersection of closed lands in Gaza, allowing for unhindered passage of aid trucks.
As Hungry continues to insist on life throughout the entire besieged enclave, Philip Lazarini said in a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Friday that UNRWA should be a major aid delivery given its ability to efficiently manage humanitarian relief efforts and years of experience.
Many airdrops have recently been made by the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Egypt and others to alleviate the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding on the besieged strip.
“Airdrops cost at least 100 times more than trucks. Trucks are responsible for twice the aid of airplanes,” Lazarini said. “If there is a political will to allow airdrops that are very expensive, inadequate and inefficient, there should be a similar political will to open road intersections.”
Lazarini warned that Gaza people are hungry for death, saying, “The only way to deal with hunger is to support Gaza and inundate it.”
He said Unrwa is the largest UN agency on the ground. “Today, UNRWA alone is equivalent to 6,000 trucks of food and medical assistance packed in Egypt and Jordan.”
Lazarini reminded the United Nations that they were able to bring in 500-600 trucks a day during a short ceasefire earlier this year.
He said that under UN oversight, aid reached the entire population of Gaza, with safety and dignity.
“We have managed to reverse the escalating starvation without diverting aid,” the UNRWA chief said.
Lazarini insisted that there was no replacement for UNRWA. “There is no alternative to the unadjusted response using UNRWA, as the backbone produced similar results.”
UN officials have urged the US government and the Israeli government to enable UNRWA to carry out its mission. “Let’s go back to what works and let us do our job.”
“This is something the people of Gaza need now more than they ever have today, and with a lasting ceasefire,” the UN Director concluded in his statement on Friday.
In a previous ceasefire that began in January and later broken by Israeli forces in March, UNRWA reported that it had managed to “deepen the hunger” in Gaza. But that fragile progress has collapsed.
On March 2, 2025, the Israeli regime ordered the closure of major land intersections in Gaza, blocking all food, medical and humanitarian supplies to the territory. According to an international human rights group, the move has exacerbated the humanitarian catastrophe for Gaza’s 2.3 million residents, many of whom are now surviving in grass and animal feed. These groups accused Israel of intentionally using hunger as a weapon of war against the Palestinian population.
Now, only limited aid has been reportedly provided by the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a controversial US- and Israel-backed organization, amid a rise in international outrage, in the midst of over 80 days of total lockdown. Critics say the GHF was established to bypass the UN’s long-standing effective aid infrastructure in Gaza, and is already plagued by accusations of corruption and politicized distribution.
The failure of the aid mechanism implemented by the GHF to deal with the massive starvation of Gaza has prompted UNRWA to describe it as a “defective delivery system” that violates humanitarian principles by limiting aid to the South and Central Gaza, demanding that Palestinians walk long distances to gather aid and provide limited aid among other critiques.
The US and the covered aid distribution point are called “large death traps” and “slaughterhouses” for the hungry Gazan.
“Every day, Palestinians meet the massacre in an attempt to receive supplies from insufficient amounts of aid to Gaza,” the Doctor Without Borders (MSF) said in a statement.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the US-backed aid distribution mechanism is “inherently unsafe” and “it’s killing people.”
“Surgeries that lead desperate civilians to militarized zones are inherently unsafe. It’s killing people,” Guterres told reporters.
Guterres said that unpublished humanitarian efforts have been “strangled,” aid workers themselves are starving, and Israel is necessary as occupation rights need to agree to the Palestinian enclave and promote the delivery of aid.
“People are killed simply trying to feed themselves and their families. A search for food should never be a death sentence,” Guterres added.
The United Nations estimates that at least 1,373 Palestinians were killed as they attempted to access food between May 27 and July 31, 2025.
In an interview, the US contractor said he witnessed his colleagues using live fires, stun grenades and pepper spray against civilians during the distribution of aid within the GHF site.
Meanwhile, the overall deaths caused by hunger and malnutrition in Gaza now reach 155, including 89 children, and are projected to escalate rapidly as siege and intersection closure continues.
This week, the World Food Programme (WFP), UNICEF and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned that “time is running out,” while Gaza was “standing on the brink of full-scale hunger.”
The Israeli regime unleashed a brutal onslaught in Gaza in October 2023. More than 60,300 Palestinians have been killed, mostly women and children.
MNA/presstv