The Reform deputy leader claimed UNRWA trucks were the ‘slowest’ to distribute food, but Israel banned the agency from making aid deliveries in March
Richard Tice went on a trip to Israel at the end of September, where he met with Israeli ministers, amid the government’s ongoing siege in Gaza, which a UN inquiry recently declared is a genocide.
Following his trip, Tice wrote a piece in ‘Conservative Woman’, a right-wing blog that has published articles containing conspiratorial claims, falsely claiming that the famine in Gaza is “a blatant lie”.
In his piece, he asked “Why is UNRWA the slowest to move aid on, often leaving it sitting on pallets for weeks?”.
On GB News, Tice repeated this claim, stating: “And do you know what I learned? It’s the UN trucks, primarily from UNRWA that are the slowest to get distributed.”
He added: “I am very concerned we are being fed misinformation deliberately by vested interests who have got a very different agenda.”
As UNRWA pointed out in a statement, the organisation “has been banned by the Israeli authorities from bringing in any humanitarian assistance including food for over seven months now (since 2 March 2025)”.
The statement added: “UNRWA currently has thousands of trucks of aid waiting in neighbouring countries (Egypt, Jordan) for the green light to enter Gaza. These trucks are loaded with food, medicines, and hygiene supplies.
“Any aid entering Gaza is not UNRWA’s since 2 March as UNRWA is not allowed by the Israeli authorities to bring in any aid inside Gaza at present.”
On GB News, Tice said that on his four-day trip to Southern Israel, he had “unique access” to the border crossing at Kerem Shalom.
He said he saw “trucks and trucks, dozens of trucks arriving”. Tice also claimed: “I was right in the centre of it, seeing more pallets of fruit and flour and bananas and avocados and onions and sugar than I’ve ever seen before.”
These claims directly contradict the UN’s latest reports: according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza, as of 1 October, 455 malnutrition-related deaths, including 151 children, have been documented since October 2023.
An alert issued by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) on 29 July 2025 warned that “the worst-case scenario of famine is currently playing out in the Gaza Strip.”
He also claimed, without providing any proof, that Hamas and gangs that are stealing food, “in particular from the UN” and selling it on the black market.
Tice has not yet recorded his recent trip to Israel in the MPs’ Register of Interests.
Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward
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