The European Commission, Canada, Australia and Sweden this month unfroze their contributions to UNRWA. But U.S. contributions, which last year totaled $422 million, typically account for about 30 percent of UNRWA’s budget, the organization says. Slashing those resources now, with more than a million Gazans on the brink of famine, could be catastrophic, officials say.

Without U.S. funding, UNRWA is anticipating about a $350 million deficit this year, unless other countries make up the loss, Deere said. It will mean less food aid, lost jobs, and schools and health clinics will be shuttered in impoverished Palestinian refugee camps across the region, including in deeply unstable Lebanon.