Lately, Palestinian holidays have turned into nothing more than a public relations campaign for Israel and more misery for the Palestinians. Israel has adopted a system whereby a couple of days prior to a holiday they announce the easing of restrictions, and pulling out of troops. After ensuring that the media has reported about Israel's 'good will' and has portrayed them as a religiously tolerant society that applies the proper sensitivity when called for, the Israeli military announces that it has suddenly received threats that Palestinian attacks are imminent and clamp a total closure on the West Bank and Gaza.

The celebratory family meals normally a hallmark of Eid al-Adha, the biggest feast of the Muslim calendar, became the latest casualty of Israel's relentless restrictions, curfews and incursions. The last 28 months of the Israeli Palestinian conflict has lead to more than one million Palestinians suffering economic collapse, growing unemployment and malnutrition levels comparable to those in Congo. Yet conditions continue to worsen as the threat of food shortages looms in the impoverished refugee camps, villages and alleyways in the West Bank and Gaza. Donor fatigue and the uncertainty surrounding Iraq's future has lead western governments to turn their backs on the UN Palestinian refugee agency's (UNRWA) appeal for funds, necessary for the survival of about one third of the Palestinian population.

UNRWA has pleaded for $94 million to feed 1.1 million people in the occupied territories and replenish its emergency fund, but has received only one commitment, of $1.5 million, from Switzerland. Palestinians are reaching new depths of poverty, particularly the people of Gaza who are trapped behind electrified fences and heavy military patrols, making Gaza one of the most densely populated war zones on the globe. UNRWA says the warehouses will be empty within weeks. Its commissioner general, Peter Hansen, said: "If we don't get money coming in soon we will have a rupture in the food distribution which will be very serious, as we already have malnutrition levels of 22% among children, and that is bound to rise if food aid stops." The children's agency, UNICEF, says child malnutrition is comparable to Congo and Zimbabwe.

UNRWA has been forced to cut the size of the rations given to 120,000 refugee families in Gaza, while in the West Bank 1,600 emergency staff will be laid off and refugee hospitalization payment is stopping. Urgent Humanitarian operations, including the re-housing of refugees made homeless by Israel's military, will have to be cancelled as demolition operations escalate. Moreover, Israel needlessly obstructs the movement of food and United Nations staff through the occupied territories and has destroyed several of the agency's installations and warehouses. To move its food rations through the territories, UNRWA has taken to relying on truck drivers supplied by Sweden.

The dire situation Israel has created in the occupied territories and the difficulties it places on aid agencies and non-governmental organizations has lead many of them to question their role and effectiveness. Many have questioned whether they are enabling Israel's military control over the territories by easing what might otherwise be intolerable conditions and thus are de facto financing the occupation. Yet, this paradoxical dilemma between helping the Palestinians on the one hand and aiding in disguising the full extent of Israel's occupation on the other remains a luxury that UNRWA does not have time to contemplate. Palestinians are starving, money is running out and UNRWA faces its biggest crisis since it was established.