UNRWA says it is forced to cut services because it cannot cover a $70 million shortfall. But laid-off employees, its staff union, and its former spokesperson say the cuts are aimed at something broader: the refugee question itself.

More than a year after the October 2025 ceasefire, Palestinian families are still searching for loved ones who vanished during Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

Hamas dissolved its government in Gaza to remove any obstacle to reconstruction, but little has changed for ordinary Palestinians in the Strip — because Israel ultimately controls whether the nightmare it has inflicted on them will ever end.

“Every moment I connect my life now to those years after the Nakba,” says 85-year-old Fatima Ibrahim Khalfallah. “This Nakba is more terrifying, more deadly, more destructive. . . The same hunger, thirst, and fear — but multiplied many times over.”