How a U.N. Agency Became a Flashpoint in the Gaza War

Lazzarini, a Swiss-Italian veteran of United Nations aid operations in Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere, took the helm of UNRWA in 2020. He hoped to put the agency on sure footing. For more than seven decades, it had lurched from one emergency to another, as turmoil in the Middle East buffeted the impoverished Palestinians that UNRWA sought to help. The war put an end to those plans. Repeated evacuation orders and the destruction caused by Israel’s air campaign have displaced about nine in 10 Gazans, some multiple times. At various points, the agency says, more than a million people — nearly half of Gaza’s population — have sought shelter in UNRWA facilities, with large families crowded into its classrooms or into warehouses that once held flour and medicine.