The crisis that threatens the future of the main United Nations agency in Gaza, amid a humanitarian disaster, began at a routine meeting between diplomats in Tel Aviv.

The sequence of events began on Jan. 18, when Philippe Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA, met with a top Israeli diplomat in Tel Aviv. Mr. Lazzarini meets roughly once a month in Israel with the diplomat, Amir Weissbrod, a deputy director general at the Israeli Foreign Ministry who oversees relationships with U.N. agencies. This was meant to be a routine discussion about the delivery of food, fuel and other aid supplies to Gaza, according to a U.N. official briefed on the meeting.

Instead, Mr. Weissbrod came supplied with the shocking intelligence about UNRWA, which had been given to him by officers in the military, according to four officials familiar with the situation.

UNRWA is the largest aid agency on the ground in Gaza, providing shelter to more than half the population and coordinating the distribution of the meager aid and fuel supplies that arrive by truck every day from Egypt and Israel. If UNRWA collapses without a plan for its replacement, some Israeli officials fear they will be forced to fill the void.

Yet, a week after the allegations were published, the agency’s survival is in question.

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