As a top UN official in Gaza accuses Donald Trump of using aid as a political weapon, fears of a major emergency are growing

'We need more food, not less': US cuts leave Palestinian refugees in crisis

In November 1948, Khadija Hijjo and her family fled Israeli forces advancing on the village of al-Jura, close to what is now the Israeli city of Ashkelon.

“We had land, we grew grapes and strawberries and dates, and we used to sell them in Jaffa,” she says. “Then, when we came to Gaza, we slept on the ground … you had all your furniture, and you left without anything.”

The sprightly 89-year old widow, whose infectious smile confounds her history, is sitting straight-backed on a plastic chair as she awaits her quarterly UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) food ration at Gaza City’s Beach refugee camp.

Hijjo, who lives alone, rattled off its contents with the precision of the prudent woman she has been for more than 70 years: one bag of flour, half a kilo of lentils, one kilo apiece of sugar and chickpeas, two bottles of cooking oil and five cans of sardines.

But now Hijjo’s food rations are at the sharp end of Donald Trump’s controversial plans to reshape the Middle East.

Until last year, the US donated roughly one-third of UNRWA’s $1.1bn (£861m) budget – easily the biggest contribution – to cover schooling, healthcare and food aid for 5.3 million Palestinian refugees in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza.

But the US has decided to end funding, in what Matthias Schmale, UNRWA’s Gaza director, called an unprecedented politicisation of aid which risks a “Yemen-style crisis”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Matthias Schmale, UNRWA’s Gaza director, talks to the press at the agency’s city headquarters. Photograph: Zuma Press/Alamy Stock Photo

Emergency donations made by Britain and other countries to make up the shortfall left by the US decision means schools and health clinics will stay open until next summer. But there are no guarantees that food aid, on which 77% of Gaza’s 1.3m registered refugees below the international poverty line depend, can be sustained beyond January, says Schmale.

The warning comes with Gaza’s economy in “freefall”, according to the World Bank, with unemployment at 54% overall and more than 70% for those under 25. Najah Haddad, 60, another Beach camp registered refugee, describes Trump’s aid cut as “haram” (forbidden), adding: “We need more food not less!” Asked if her husband or stepson was working, she caustically replied: “Is there work in Gaza?”

Nearly two-thirds of Gaza’s almost 2 million residents are, like Haddad, descendants of the 700,000 refugees who were forced out or fled their homes in the 1948 war that established Israel as a state.

Historically, Palestinian leaders have insisted on the right of refugees to return to Israel, although it was long assumed that they would agree compensation for most descendants and a symbolic return for a minority in any two-state solution.

UN officials believe that Washington, which strongly objects to what it calls the “exponentially” increasing numbers of registered descendants, wants to remove that bargaining card – one of the few Palestinians have – from any future negotiations.

Asked in August whether the administration was seeking to “get the right of return off the table”, the US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, said: “I do agree with that … I absolutely think we have to look at right of return.”

Schmale, a German, told the Guardian: “Whatever [the] politics, and whether they are justified or not, [the US is] trying to achieve political aims on the back of humanitarian aid to people. It’s extraordinary. I haven’t really come across this in my 30 years in this business.”

The halt to UNRWA funding is in addition to the withdrawal of at least $200m in other aid to the Palestinians, apparently to force them to accept whatever peace deal with Israel the US president seeks to impose on them. Trump told US Jewish leaders in September that he was saying to the Palestinians: “You’ll get money, but we’re not paying until you make a deal. If you don’t make a deal, we’re not paying.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A demonstrator at the Israel-Gaza border in southern Gaza holds a poster of Donald Trump emblazoned with a red cross. Photograph: Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters

Ending food aid would reduce most refugees to the level of the poorest non-refugees who do not receive UN food aid, like Mohammed Abu Beid, 22. He rises at 6am with his brothers to clamber through Gaza City’s rubbish skips searching for recyclable plastic, for which he is paid five shekels (about £1) a kilo, and aluminium cans, for 70 of which he gets about 20p. He used to sell cigarette lighters at road junctions, but can no longer afford the wholesale price.

Schmale says that, in an ideal world, there would be advantages in not being as dependent on a single donor as UNRWA had been on the US. But the cuts came at a time when overall aid to Palestinians was already approaching an all-time low.

This is partly down to other crises, like those in Yemen, Central African Republic and Syria, competing for limited resources. But it is also, says Schmale, because “some donors will say: ‘When the crisis is not caused by a tsunami or earthquake or something but by politics, we’re fed up with putting valuable resources we could be using to address hunger and floods and so on, into a highly politicised environment.’”

He says he is repeatedly seeking to impress on donors the need for “preventative” humanitarian aid for refugees in Gaza. “If I was a donor, I would say: ‘Is Gaza as dramatic as Yemen?’ The objective answer is no. [But] if we stop food for half the population this place will collapse and could descend into a Yemen-like crisis.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Pupils outside a school run by the UNRWA in Gaza City after the summer holidays. Photograph: Mahmud Hams/AFP/Getty Images

Schmale says the resilience of Gazans after 11 years of blockade and three wars is “eroding”, as shown by growing suicide rates and the participation of thousands of young people in twice-weekly border protests despite 22,000 injuries, nearly a quarter of which are “lifelong”. This shows “a level of desperation that wasn’t there two or three years ago”, says Schmale.

Palestinian anger over US decision to end funding for UN agency Read more

While a previous $446m deficit has now been cut to $21m, Schmale has been forced to cut over 100 jobs and make more than 500 staff part-time in response to the funding crisis. Twenty international staff were briefly evacuated in October after angry UNRWA trade union members swarmed around a vehicle in which they were travelling. Hamas police did not intervene in the incident.

When the job cuts were announced in July, Schmale, who has his own close protection officers, was provided with a Hamas escort in Gaza after employees occupied his office. Talks between the UNRWA director and the union have since averted the threat of an all-out strike.

Gaza: Preparing for Dawn by Donald Macintyre is published by OneWorld Publications (£10.99). To order a copy for £9.67 go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99