How UNRWA funding crisis affects its most vulnerable fields of operation beyond Gaza

Women look on as they stand outside a home along an alley at the Shatila camp for Palestinian refugees in the southern suburbs of Beirut, on April 19, 2023. (AFP)
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Updated 06 February 2024
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How UNRWA funding crisis affects its most vulnerable fields of operation beyond Gaza

  • Defunding major employer of Palestinians in Syria and Lebanon will deprive thousands of families of breadwinners
  • Stoppage of operations will come as a major shock to already ailing Syrian and Lebanese economies

LONDON: With the primary lifeline for millions of Palestinian refugees in the Middle East likely to be severed by the end of February, many families reliant on the UN Relief and Works Agency fear they could fall deeper into poverty — or worse.

Since fleeing the Yarmouk camp in Damascus and moving to Lebanon in 2015, Ayham, whose name has been changed to protect his identity, and his family of three have been surviving on the modest allowance provided by UNRWA.

“We are barely making ends meet even though I do some laboring whenever I find it,” Ayham, 43, told Arab News. “How are we going to survive if we lose UNRWA’s monthly stipend and how will my daughter receive any education?”

Ayham’s family were among the 31,400 Palestinian refugees who fled to Lebanon from neighboring Syria after protests against the government of President Bashar Assad in 2011 escalated into a full-blown civil war.




Shatha, the daughter of 48-year-old Palestinian refugee Issa Al-Loubani, looks out the window of their apartment in the Palestinian Yarmuk camp, on the southern outskirts of the Syrian capital Damascus, on November 25, 2020. (AFP/File)

UNRWA has been providing Palestinian refugees in Gaza, the West Bank, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan with a monthly cash grant of $100 per family, and an additional $27 for each family member.

For those who have been unable to secure a steady income, the stipend has been all that has stood in the way of destitution. However, on Jan. 26, the US suspended its funding for UNRWA in response to troubling allegations. Several other major donors quickly followed suit.

Consequently, the UN agency, founded in 1949 in the wake of the mass exodus of Palestinians during the Nakba, will likely have to halt operations, including in the embattled Gaza Strip, by the end of the month if funding is not restored.

The funding suspensions came after Israeli intelligence alleged that 12 UNRWA employees were involved in the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, and that 10 percent of the agency’s 12,000 employees in Gaza had doubled as Hamas or Islamic Jihad operatives.

On Oct. 7, Hamas carried out a surprise attack on southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking 240 others captive.

In retaliation, Israel launched a bombing campaign in Gaza, killing more than 27,000 people, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, wounding 66,000 others, and forcibly displacing 85 percent of the enclave’s 2.2 million population.




Palestinian refugees gather outside the offices of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, in Beirut on January 30, 2024 to protest against some countries' decision to stop funding the organization. (AFP)

Munir Nuseibah, professor of international law at Al-Quds University in Jerusalem, said cutting UNRWA funds was “unjustifiable.”

He told Arab News: “Defunding UNRWA at a time during which the Palestinian population is suffering from Israel’s genocidal war and policies, including starvation, reflects complicity with this crime.

“Just when the International Court of Justice ordered allowing humanitarian services and aid access to Gaza’s civilians, Israel’s allies decided to defund UNRWA.”

After South Africa brought a case to the ICJ accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza, the UN’s highest court ordered Israel to take all measures within its power to prevent genocidal acts and to allow humanitarian aid into the Palestinian enclave.

Some analysts have even accused donor nations of hypocrisy, highlighting occasions when UN agencies have been caught up in scandals yet have not lost their funding.

INNUMBERS

PALESTINIAN REFUGEES

  • 1.5m In Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, and the West Bank.
  • 489,292 Hosted by Lebanon.
  • 438,000 Hosted by Syria.
  • 31,400 Have fled Syria and now reside in Lebanon.

Source: UNRWA

Karam Shaar, a senior fellow at the New Lines Institute, told Arab News: “If you look at the conduct of the UN in other countries and the reaction of Western governments, relative to the way they reacted to what UNRWA might have done in Palestine, I think that reveals a predisposition to basically cut the aid on Palestinians.

“It also, to my mind, shows a level of hypocrisy. Has the UN been implicated in the past with significant scandals? Of course. But is the solution to just cut the funds without establishing alternative channels for a population that’s effectively under siege from all directions? That’s inhumane.”

UNRWA supports around 6 million Palestinian refugees throughout the region. Analysts expect the impact of the defunding of its services will be keenly felt by those countries hosting displaced households.

There were 489,292 Palestinian refugees registered in Lebanon as of March 2023, and 575,234 in Syria as of July 2022, according to UNRWA figures. An estimated 438,000 remain in Syria.




A Palestinian refugee holds a placard at a school belonging to UNRWA in the town of Sebline east of the southern Lebanese port of Saida, on March 12, 2018, during a protest against US aid cuts to the organization. (AFP)

Mohammad Al-Asadi, a Germany-based research economist at the Syrian Center for Policy Research, noted that the suspension of UNRWA funding “could have a devastating impact on the lives and livelihoods of Palestinian refugees living in Syria and Lebanon, as the vast majority of them are vulnerable.”

He told Arab News: “UNRWA is the sole provider of cash transfers and food baskets to Palestinian refugees affected by the Syrian conflict.

“Tens of thousands of families rely on this aid to secure basic nutrition needs. Suspending aid to these families will push them immediately below abject poverty level.”

Syria’s economy has been brought to its knees by more than a decade of fighting, sanctions, and isolation. The World Bank reclassified Syria in 2018 as a low-income country. Between 2010 and 2020, its gross domestic product shrank by more than a half.




A schoolboy holds a Palestinian flag as he stands with others wearing Palestinian keffiyeh scarves during a sit-in protest at the Shatila camp for Palestinian refugees in the southern suburb of Beirut on November 7, 2023. (AFP)

Although Palestinian refugees in Syria have the same rights as Syrian citizens in terms of employment, trade, and access to civil service positions and public services, Al-Asadi said that shutting down UNRWA operations “will have a substantial impact on increasing poverty incidence in the country, particularly among Palestinian refugees.”

He pointed out that ceasing UNRWA operations in Syria would “leave thousands of breadwinners unemployed, as UNRWA is a major employer of Palestinians and Syrians in its schools, medical clinics, and vocational training centers.”

He added that it would also force the agency to suspend its widespread vocational training programs, “leaving thousands of young Palestinian refugees unequipped in an economy where the unemployment rate exceeds 40 percent, according to SCPR estimates.”

Al-Asadi said: “The confluence of rising unemployment, the cessation of food and cash assistance, and the unattainable healthcare and education services is very likely to compel a significant influx of Palestinian refugees in Syria and Lebanon across the Mediterranean to Europe.”

Furthermore, for both Syria and Lebanon, it “will cause a severe shock to the human capital reserve in these two countries, as UNRWA is the primary provider of education and healthcare services for Palestinian refugees.

“This will leave hundreds of thousands of families without access to affordable life-saving healthcare services. The already overcrowded education systems in both countries have no capacity to embed tens of thousands of students.

“This is particularly problematic in Lebanon, where public-sector-led schools host around 500,000 school-aged Syrian refugees.”




A woman sits with her child after fleeing the Ain El-Helweh Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon’s southern coastal city of Sidon on September 9, 2023, amid renewed clashes between the Fatah movement and Islamists. (AFP)

Lebanese analyst Nasser Elamine told Arab News that in Lebanon, “defunding UNRWA means over 301,400 Palestinian refugees, the majority of whom already live under the poverty line, according to the UN, will effectively be abandoned by the world with no devices to secure the minimal requirements of daily life, including education and healthcare.”

Elamine said: “Palestinian refugees in Lebanon are denied access to work in trade-union-regulated professions, and with a real economy that barely produces jobs as it is (let alone following the 2019 economic collapse), Palestinians will have no way to even begin to fill the gap that a pause in UNRWA funding will leave.”

Lebanon prohibits Palestinian refugees from participating in around 70 occupations regulated by its trade unions, including in the fields of engineering, law, and medicine.

Pulling the financial plug on UNRWA is likely to have an adverse impact on the Lebanese economy, which has been in the throes of a ruinous financial crisis since 2019.

Elamine noted that the unemployment rate in Lebanon was “already at around 30 percent of the population, while labor force participation was at only 43 percent in 2022, according to UNICEF, and the multidimensional poverty rate is at 81 percent,” as per data from the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia.

“For the last year or so, Lebanon has managed to set up a facade of crisis normalization by effectively dollarizing half of its economy.

“UNRWA was responsible for bringing millions of dollars’ worth of hard currencies monthly into Lebanon through Lebanese banks where they would be spent in the form of salaries, projects, educational and health services, as well funds for small businesses.

“On top of that, the Lebanese state would receive a segment of those funds in return for allowing refugees to remain in the country. The sudden disappearance of these funds will necessarily leave the economy in shock — but to what extent remains to be determined.”




A handout picture released by UNRWA on April 17, 2015 and taken the day before shows displaced people from the nearby Yarmuk Palestinian refugee camp queuing to receive aid from the organization in Yalda, south of Damascus. (AFP) 

According to UNRWA officials, the agency had already reached a “danger zone” in 2022 after more than a decade of underfunding. Last year, donations covered just 36 percent of its budget.

Beyond the humanitarian services provided by UNRWA, Lebanese economist Nadim Shehadi told Arab News that the agency’s significance lay primarily in being “the memory” of the Palestinian refugee population and a key entity for resolving the Palestinian issue.

He said: “As an institution, UNRWA is extremely important for any future settlement of the Palestinian question. UNRWA has the details and data of every Palestinian family — of every Palestinian refugee.”

Article 11 of UN Resolution 194 (III) entitles Palestinian refugees to either the right to return to their homes or to be resettled and receive compensation. Shehadi pointed out that the information held by UNRWA was essential to the implementation of the article.

“Any solution (to the Palestinian issue) would have to address the refugee issue. It is the main stumbling block for a comprehensive solution, and that solution, for being implemented, needs the data and the mechanism that only UNRWA can provide,” he added.

 


UN expert urges states to cut Israel trade ties over ‘apocalyptic’ Gaza situation

Updated 3 sec ago
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UN expert urges states to cut Israel trade ties over ‘apocalyptic’ Gaza situation

GENEVA: A UN expert on Thursday called on states to impose an arms embargo and cut off trade and financial ties with Israel, which she alleged is waging a “genocidal campaign” in Gaza.
In a speech to the UN Human Rights Council, UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese said: “The situation in the occupied Palestinian territory is apocalyptic.”
“Israel is responsible for one of the cruellest genocides in modern history,” she added, in a speech that was met with a burst of applause from the Geneva council.
Israel’s diplomatic mission in Geneva did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Albanese’s speech.
Israel has rejected accusations of genocide in Gaza, citing its right to self-defense following the deadly October 7, 2023, Hamas attack. Its delegate was not present in the room in line with a new policy to disengage with the council which Israel says has an antisemitic bias.
Albanese, one of dozens of independent UN-mandated experts to document abuses around the world, was presenting her latest report which named over 60 companies she said were involved in supporting Israeli settlements and military actions in Gaza.
“What I expose is not a list, it is a system, and that is to be addressed,” she told the council.
“We must reverse the tide,” she added, calling for states to impose a full arms embargo, suspend all trade agreements and ensure companies face legal consequences for their involvement in violations of international law.
Israel’s diplomatic mission in Geneva earlier this week said Albanese’s latest report was “legally groundless, defamatory and a flagrant abuse of her office.”

Gaza death toll rises: 82 killed, 38 while waiting for aid

Updated 03 July 2025
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Gaza death toll rises: 82 killed, 38 while waiting for aid

  • Gaza’s Health Ministry said the number of Palestinians killed in Gaza has passed 57,000
  • More than 90% of Gaza’s 2.3 million population has been displaced, often multiple times

TEL AVIV: Airstrikes and shootings killed 82 Palestinians in Gaza overnight, including 38 while attempting to get much-needed humanitarian aid, hospitals and the Health Ministry said Thursday.

Israel’s military did not have immediate comment on the strikes.

Five people were killed while outside sites associated with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the newly created, secretive American organization backed by Israel to feed the Gaza Strip’s population, while 33 others were killed waiting for aid trucks in other locations across the Gaza Strip.

Dozens of people were killed in airstrikes that pounded the Strip Wednesday night and Thursday morning, including 15 people killed in strikes that hit tents in the sprawling Muwasi zone, where many displaced Palestinians are sheltering, and a strike on a school in Gaza City sheltering displaced people.

Gaza’s Health Ministry said the number of Palestinians killed in Gaza has passed 57,000, including 223 missing people who have been declared dead. The ministry doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants in its death count but says that more than half of the dead are women and children.

The deaths come as Israel and Hamas inch closer to a possible ceasefire that would end the 21-month war.

Trump said Tuesday that Israel had agreed on terms for a 60-day ceasefire in Gaza and urged Hamas to accept the deal before conditions worsen. But Hamas’ response, which emphasized its demand that the war end, raised questions about whether the latest offer could materialize into an actual pause in fighting.

The Israeli military blames Hamas for the civilian casualties because it operates from populated areas. The military said it targeted Hamas militants and rocket launchers in northern Gaza that launched rockets towards Israel on Wednesday.

The war began on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking roughly 250 hostages.

The war has left the coastal Palestinian territory in ruins, with much of the urban landscape flattened in the fighting.

More than 90% of Gaza’s 2.3 million population has been displaced, often multiple times. And the war has sparked a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, leaving hundreds of thousands of people hungry.


Scorching summer heat deepens Gaza’s daily struggles

Updated 03 July 2025
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Scorching summer heat deepens Gaza’s daily struggles

  • Temperatures are exceeding 30 degrees Celsius with displaced children sweltering inside cramped nylon tents

KHAN YOUNIS: For Rida Abu Hadayed, summer adds a new layer of misery to a daily struggle to survive in the war-ravaged Gaza Strip.

With temperatures exceeding 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit), daybreak begins with the cries of Hadayed’s seven children sweltering inside the displaced family’s cramped nylon tent. Outside, the humidity is unbearable.

The only way the 32-year-old mother can offer her children relief is by fanning them with a tray or bits of paper — whatever she can find. If she has water, she pours it over them, but that is an increasingly scarce resource.

“There is no electricity. There is nothing,” she said, her face beaded with sweat. “They cannot sleep. They keep crying all day until the sun sets.”

The heat in Gaza has intensified hardships for its 2 million residents. Reduced water availability, crippled sanitation networks, and shrinking living spaces threaten to cause illnesses to cascade through communities, aid groups have long warned.

The scorching summer coincides with a lack of clean water for the majority of Gaza’s population, most of whom are displaced in tented communities. Many Palestinians in the enclave must walk long distances to fetch water and ration each drop, limiting their ability to wash and keep cool.

“We are only at the beginning of summer,” Hadayed’s husband, Yousef, said. “And our situation is dire.”

Israel had blocked food, fuel, medicine and all other supplies from entering Gaza for nearly three months. It began allowing limited aid in May, but fuel needed to pump water from wells or operate desalination plants is still not getting into the territory.

With fuel supplies short, only 40 percent of drinking water production facilities are functioning in the Gaza Strip, according to a recent report by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. All face imminent collapse. Up to 93 percent of households face water shortages, the June report said.

The Hadayeds were displaced after evacuation orders forced them to leave eastern Khan Younis.

“Our lives in the tent are miserable. We spend our days pouring water over their heads and their skin,” Yousef Hadayed said. “Water itself is scarce. It is very difficult to get that water.”

UNICEF’s spokesperson recently said that if fuel supplies are not allowed to enter the enclave, children will die of thirst.

“Me and my children spend our days sweating,” said Reham Abu Hadayed, a 30-year-old relative of Rida Abu Hadayed who was also displaced from eastern Khan Younis. She worries about the health of her four children.

“I don’t have enough money to buy them medicine,” she said.

For Mohammed Al-Awini, 23, the heat is not the worst part. It’s the flies and mosquitoes that bombard his tent, especially at night.

Without adequate sewage networks, garbage piles up on streets, attracting insects and illness. The stench of decomposing trash wafts in the air.

“We are awake all night, dying from mosquito bites,” he said. “We are the most tired people in the world.”


Ailing S.Sudan president prepares volatile succession

Updated 03 July 2025
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Ailing S.Sudan president prepares volatile succession

  • For months, Kiir has been manoeuvring to sideline rivals
  • The world’s youngest country, South Sudan has been plagued by poverty and violence since gaining independence in 2011

JUBA: With South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir undergoing medical tests abroad after years of rumors about his health, analysts say a long-gestating plan has been set in motion to secure his succession.

Kiir returned from at least 10 days in the United Arab Emirates on Wednesday, with state media saying he had been “exploring new avenues for economic cooperation.”

But members of his entourage, speaking on condition of anonymity, previously told AFP he was there for medical tests — reinforcing long-held concerns about the 73-year-old’s health.

The world’s youngest country, South Sudan has been plagued by poverty and violence since gaining independence in 2011, including a civil war that killed some 400,000 people in 2013-2018.

After a few relatively calm years, the country has been thrown back into turmoil in recent months, prompted, say analysts, by Kiir’s declining health and his efforts to install his heir-apparent, businessman Benjamin Bol Mel, in power.

Bol Mel is a controversial figure, who gained prominence as a construction magnate and was said to handle the Kiir family’s finances.

He was placed on a sanctions list by the United States in 2017 for corruption.

For months, Kiir has been manoeuvring to sideline rivals.

His old foe, Riek Machar, against whom he fought the civil war, was placed under house arrest in March and many of his political allies disappeared into detention.

Kiir’s forces have attacked Machar’s military bases and other armed groups drawn from his ethnic group, the Nuer.

More than 700 people were killed in clashes between January and March alone, according to the United Nations.

Rumours about Kiir’s health have long circulated but the topic is absolutely off-limits for discussion in official circles.

“If you want to visit a grave quickly, talk about it,” said a local activist, requesting anonymity for safety reasons.

Nonetheless, the frailty was obvious in April when Kiir hosted Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, who walked briskly despite his 80 years while Kiir moved in tiny steps.

In May, the foreign ministry had to issue a statement assuring that the head of state was still alive following rumors to the contrary on social media.

State media footage of Kiir’s return from the UAE on Wednesday cut away every time he was about to take a step.

During his absence, it was Bol Mel — who was named second vice president in February and deputy head of the ruling party in May — who chaired last week’s cabinet meeting.

“It seems to be a script written a long time ago and being implemented in phases,” said Wani Michael, a former activist now in exile.

“They had to take away Riek Machar to pave the way for Bol Mel because... Riek would give Bol Mel a hard time,” he added.

In October, Kiir also fired his intelligence chief, Akol Koor, another potential rival who held that post for 13 years.

Bol Mel “has taken control of the security forces by installing loyalists. He has taken over the security and financial apparatus since last November-December,” said a diplomat based in Juba, also speaking on condition of anonymity.

Despite an uptick in violence, the moves have not triggered renewed war as many feared.

“It’s devastating on a humanitarian level, but it’s nothing compared to the colossal massacres of a few years ago when thousands died each month,” said the diplomat, adding that the government “has been fairly successful in subduing the various rebellions.”

Machar’s forces have barely retaliated to attacks and his party is split on the way forward.

But success is not guaranteed for Bol Mel, either, warned local analyst James Boboya.

“The government has not gained legitimacy at home or internationally,” he told AFP.

There is particular disillusionment at the failure to hold the country’s first-ever elections, which were again postponed last year to 2026.

“Elections are the only viable way for a peaceful transfer of power,” said Edmund Yakani, president of the Community Empowerment for Progress Organization, a local NGO.

“We need the power of our vote in shaping the future. Not the bullet, and not leaders imposed on us.”


Netanyahu vows to uproot Hamas as ceasefire proposals are discussed

Updated 03 July 2025
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Netanyahu vows to uproot Hamas as ceasefire proposals are discussed

  • Nearly 21 months of war have created dire humanitarian conditions for the more than two million people in the Gaza Strip, where Israel has recently expanded its military operations

Gaza City, Palestinian Territories: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday vowed to eradicate Hamas, even as the Palestinian militant group said it was discussing new proposals from mediators for a ceasefire in Gaza.
The Israeli leader had yet to comment on US President Donald Trump’s claim that Israel had backed a plan for a 60-day truce in its offensive against Hamas in the war-ravaged territory.
But a week ahead of talks scheduled with Trump in Washington, he vowed to “destroy” Hamas “down to their very foundation.”
Hamas said it was “conducting national consultations to discuss” the proposals submitted in negotiations mediated by Qatar and Egypt.
Nearly 21 months of war have created dire humanitarian conditions for the more than two million people in the Gaza Strip, where Israel has recently expanded its military operations.
The civil defense agency said that Israeli forces had killed at least 47 people on Wednesday.
Among the dead was Marwan Al-Sultan, director of the Indonesian Hospital, a key clinic in the north of Gaza, Palestinian officials said.
Trump on Tuesday urged Hamas to accept a 60-day ceasefire, saying that Israel had agreed to finalize such a deal.
Hamas said in a statement that it was studying the latest proposals and aiming “to reach an agreement that guarantees ending the aggression, achieving the withdrawal (of Israeli forces from Gaza) and urgently aiding our people in the Gaza Strip.”
Netanyahu vowed however: “We will free all our hostages, and we will eliminate Hamas. It will be no more,” in filmed comments in the city of Ashkelon near Gaza’s northern border.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar earlier said that he saw “some positive signs,” amid high pressure to bring home the hostages.
“We are serious in our will to reach a hostage deal and a ceasefire,” he said. “Our goal is to begin proximity talks as soon as possible.”
Out of 251 hostages seized by Palestinian militants in October 2023, 49 are still held in Gaza, including 27 the Israeli military says are dead.
A Palestinian source familiar with the mediated negotiations told AFP that “there are no fundamental changes in the new proposal” under discussion compared to previous terms presented by the United States.
The source said that the new proposal “includes a 60-day truce, during which Hamas would release half of the living Israeli captives in the Gaza Strip, in exchange for Israel releasing a number of Palestinian prisoners and detainees.”
In southern Gaza, civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP that five members of the same family were killed in an Israeli air strike on Wednesday that hit a tent housing displaced people in the Al-Mawasi area.
Despite being declared a safe zone by Israel in December 2023, Al-Mawasi has been hit by repeated Israeli strikes.
AFP footage from the area showed makeshift tents blown apart as Palestinians picked through the wreckage trying to salvage what was left of their belongings.
“They came here thinking it was a safe area and they were killed. What did they do?” said one resident, Maha Abu Rizq, against a backdrop of destruction.
AFP footage from nearby Khan Yunis city showed infants covered in blood being rushed into Nasser Hospital. One man carrying a child whose face was smeared with blood screamed: “Children, children!“
Among other fatalities, Bassal later reported five people killed by Israeli army fire near an aid distribution site close to the southern city of Rafah and a further death following Israeli fire near an aid site in the center of the territory.
They were the latest in a string of deadly incidents that have hit people trying to receive food.
Media restrictions in Gaza and difficulties in accessing many areas mean AFP is unable to independently verify the tolls and details provided by rescuers.
Contacted by AFP, the Israeli military said it “is operating to dismantle Hamas military capabilities” in line with “international law, and takes feasible precautions to mitigate civilian harm.”
It said in a statement that a 19-year-old sergeant in its forces “fell during combat in the northern Gaza Strip.”
The military late on Wednesday issued a fresh evacuation warning to residents for three neighborhoods of Gaza City, urging them to flee south to the Mawasi area.
Israeli forces are “operating with extreme intensity in the area and will attack any location being used to launch missiles toward the State of Israel,” Arabic-language spokesman Avichay Adraee said in a message on Telegram.
“The destruction of terrorist organizations will continue and expand into the city center, encompassing all neighborhoods of the city,” Avichay wrote.
The military earlier said that its air force had intercepted two “projectiles” that crossed from northern Gaza into Israeli territory.
Israel launched its offensive in response to Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack which resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has killed at least 57,012 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry. The United Nations considers its figures reliable.