The dire consequences of banning aid agencies in Gaza for Palestinian survival

SPARE a thought for the Palestinian people in 2026. The anti-Palestine dice is so heavily loaded against them that one shudders to think if there can be any worse form of catastrophe the Palestinians have never known.

In 2025, we witnessed what appeared to be a surge in countries undertaking to officially recognise Palestinian statehood. Of greater significance was the support for Palestine from around the Western capitals such as Ireland, Spain and Australia.

The UK, another wishy-washy traditional ally of the US, also joined in the pro-Palestinian fray, albeit grudgingly. It is worth highlighting that support for Israel by any nation guarantees that nation's entry into Washington’s bad books. That is the context — a widening schism between the US and traditional allies in the West.

US President Donald Trump’s indiscriminate tariffs not only hurt Western allies but also publicly embarrassed them to no end. The strength, power and stranglehold of the US over Western allies is a grip too tight to loosen. The Palestinian issue is a case in point. If 2025 was horrible for Palestinians, 2026 may make it look like a picnic.

The State of Israel, a major source of Palestine’s doom and gloom throughout recorded history, has started 2026 with more ferocity than last year’s blatant and heartless subjugation of the Palestinians.

Here, let me state my conclusion before I substantiate my standpoint: There is no future for Palestinians, and no amount of verbal protestations can alter that path to hell for the beleaguered Palestinians.

To the powerful nations of the world, the Palestine issue is a moot point. They’ve been, they are and will always be stateless. They are a people without a country to call home. No sovereignty. They simply float in the subjugated areas, better described as “occupied territories”. There, they live under apartheid oppression of the worst kind.

South Africa’s white minority apartheid rule pales into insignificance when juxtaposed with Israel’s draconian enslavement of Palestinians, controlling every aspect of their lives. Extra-judicial killings are a common occurrence, detention without trial is a norm, and the regard for Palestinian lives as sub-human official stance.

Although an eternal optimist in me says Palestinians shall overcome, the stark reality is a daily reminder about the extent to which the forces of darkness are powerful, oftentimes powerful beyond measure.

The silent obedience and endorsement of Washington’s Middle Eastern foreign policy by hordes of seemingly reasonable nations, coupled with the internal community’s deafening silence over Israel’s sheer unadulterated excesses and what South Africa has phrased as genocide, paints a true picture of hopelessness and certain doom for Palestinians, today and in the future.

The demise of the Palestinian people has been systematic in methodology and brutal in execution. In my view, it really kicked up a gear when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Knesset resolved to ban UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees) in 2025.

The flimsy explanation put forward by Israel was that UNRWA was a vehicle for Hamas. Although it later transpired that the allegations were at best baseless or at worst exaggerated. Despite the spurious claims by Israel, Washington led a plethora of relatively wealthy Western nations to immediately withdraw their support for UNRWA despite the UN agency’s declaration of its innocence.

Why did this matter? It mattered because UNRWA was founded after the 1948 NAKBA to provide “essential human development and humanitarian aid directly to Palestinian refugees”. UNRWA offers to the Palestinians the following services: “Education, healthcare, relief, social support, microfinance and emergency response.”

In a nutshell, UNRWA serves as a buffer between the ensuing “genocide” and Palestinians. To remove the UN body from the equation is, therefore, a well-thought-out move aimed at expediting the collective demise of the Palestinians.

For those who may not be in the know, UNRWA survives on voluntary funding from the UN member-states. When, on the say-so of Israel and the US several countries withdrew their financial support, the threat was not to UNRWA, but to the very fundamental survival of the beleaguered people of Palestine.

This week, as winter set in, Israel cut electricity and water supply to all facilities owned by UNRWA, a move immediately condemned by the UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres. The UN Chief is a frequent object of scorn and condemnation by the omnipotent Israel. Since October 2023, more than 70 000 Palestinians have been killed.

Many thousands are still trapped under the rubble of bombed residential buildings, schools and hospitals. Although there is a ceasefire in place between Israel and Hamas,the  Palestinian Authority has recorded more than 1 000 ceasefire violations by Israel.

This year, effective from January 1, Israel banned 40 humanitarian organisations from working in Gaza, accusing them of aiding terrorism. Among the notable organisations were Doctors Without Borders, Oxfam, War Child Holland and Danish Refugee Council.

Also this week, Israel approved the erection of a further 126 illegal settlements in the occupied territories at the same time that bulldozers were flattening Palestinian housing units, forcing mass displacement that left stranded Palestinians scrambling for a roof over their heads.

The demolished housing units at the Nur Shams refugee camp housed some 100 families. Mutaz Mahr, one of the victims who watched his home destroyed by cranes and bulldozers, later told Al Jazeera: “Being torn away from our homes, our neighbourhoods and our memories is deeply painful.”

I cite the above statements of fact to substantiate my gloomy forecast that the stateless people of Palestine are only surviving the intervention of divine power. In this world, the Palestinians have so few friends, like South Africa, a relatively mid-income power with practically limited influence to turn the tide in favour of the Palestinians.

In my view, until humanity resurfaces and ordinary people of the world bypass their political rulers to act in support of the freedom of Palestinians, just as they did during the dark days of apartheid South Africa, the entire human race will have to bear the blame for complicity in the oppression of the Palestinians when the judgement day comes.

* Abbey Makoe is Founder and Editor-in-Chief: Global South Media Network (gsmn.co.za). Views expressed are wholly personal.

** The views expressed here do not reflect those of the Sunday Independent, Independent Media, or IOL.

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