Gaza: Hostilities, displacement orders imperil civilians – OCHA

20 June 2025

OCHA reports that Israeli operations in Gaza have continued – including air strikes and shelling across the Strip – resulting in further casualties, displacement, and destruction of civilian infrastructure.

Today, Israeli authorities issued another displacement order in Gaza governorate, citing Palestinian rocket fire from that area. This has affected two neighbourhoods – Ash Shuja’iyyeh Aj Jadeeda and At Tuffah – where hundreds of families are living.

Humanitarians in Gaza continue to deliver life-saving assistance, despite severe movement restrictions and lengthy coordination processes.

Yesterday, out of 21 attempts by the UN and its partners to coordinate humanitarian movements inside Gaza, 12 were facilitated by the Israeli authorities, including the dispatch of fuel to the north, the retrieval of solid waste, and the distribution of medical supplies. Five other attempts, including water trucking and road repair, were denied, while the remaining four had to be cancelled by the organizers.

OCHA notes that no fuel has entered the Strip for 16 weeks. The UN managed to retrieve fuel from the At Tahreer station in Rafah on Wednesday. A limited amount of that fuel was delivered yesterday to public utilities in southern Gaza, enabling the continued operation of desalination plants, water trucking services and sewage pumping stations.

Partners report that the delivery brought vital relief and bought time ahead of the shutdown of key water and sanitation systems. However, fuel instability and shortages continue to limit operations, resulting in reduced operating hours and capacity.

This week, central and southern Gaza has been experiencing a major telecommunications outage due to the damage of a fibre-optic cable serving those areas. Today, one of the Palestinian service providers reported that it has started to restore fixed Internet and landline services in some parts of southern Gaza. Despite major security risks and difficult conditions on the ground, the team continues to work to get services back up and running in central and southern areas of the Strip.

Meanwhile, UNICEF warns that the number of malnourished children in Gaza is rising at an alarming rate – with more than 5,100 children between six months and five years of age admitted for treatment for acute malnutrition in May alone. The agency says this represents a nearly 50 per cent increase compared to April – and a 150 per cent increase compared to February, when a ceasefire was in effect and aid was entering the Strip in significant quantities.

UNICEF says that in just 150 days – from the start of the year until the end of May – more than 16,700 children, which is an average of 112 each day, have been admitted for malnutrition treatment in Gaza. Each one of these cases is preventable. The food, water and nutrition treatments these children desperately need are being blocked from reaching them.

UNICEF called for Israel to urgently allow the large-scale delivery of life-saving aid through all border crossings. The agency says it has been distributing what little nutrition supplies it has, and is able to bring into Gaza. Meanwhile, the equivalent of 1,000 truckloads of health, nutrition and other supplies are outside the borders, ready to be delivered.

Partners providing child protection services continue to deliver life-saving support despite immense challenges. Over the last two days, more than 1,400 children and caregivers received critical services – including structured psychosocial support, case management and individual consultations – across 10 locations in Gaza city, Deir al Balah and Khan Younis. Additionally, explosive ordnance risk education activities reached 850 children.

Displacement orders, combined with ongoing hostilities, are forcing people into increasingly overcrowded areas already hosting large numbers of displaced families, where essential services are stretched beyond capacity.

OCHA underscores that civilians must be protected, including those fleeing and forced to leave through displacement orders and those who remain despite those orders.

West Bank: Hundreds of Palestinians in Masafer Yatta face displacement threat

OCHA warns that more than 1,200 Palestinians in 13 communities in the Masafer Yatta area of southern Hebron, in the West Bank, are now at greater risk of forced displacement.

This follows a new Israeli move to reject any pending and new planning-and-zoning requests in that area outright, including applications for building permits.

This area was designated by the Israeli military as a “firing zone” in the 1980s, and its residents have over the years been subjected to a range of policies and practices by the Israeli authorities and Israeli settlers that have undermined their living conditions and generated repeated waves of displacement.

OCHA warns that this latest development could speed up the demolition of all structures in those communities: homes, schools, clinics, and other structures and facilities that support Palestinian lives and livelihoods in Masafer Yatta.

OCHA calls for stepped-up protection for these herding communities, who have remained in the area for decades, as they come under mounting pressure to leave.