It’s proving to be even harder to deliver aid in Gaza
Gaza’s health ministry and UNRWA, says it is tough for humanitarian operations in a conflict-torn country like Afghanistan and Ukraine
As combat operations have increased pressure on civilians, Israel’s military has declared “safe zones” where it says people can seek refuge from the fighting. But international aid groups say these zones are inadequate.
“This is very different than any other conflict or war we’ve had to manage,” Touma says, adding that it is the largest humanitarian response operation in UNRWA’s nearly 75-year history.
According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, at least 17,000 Palestinians have been killed and more than 46,000 wounded in Israel’s air and ground campaign. In response to the attack by Hamas on southern Israel, it was put in place.
Paul Spiegel, director of the Center for Humanitarian Health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, is a physician and epidemiologist who spent decades working in such war-torn countries as Afghanistan and Ukraine. He says that in Gaza, “there are many unique aspects to it, which makes it so difficult.”
Spiegel, who is currently in Cairo working with international aid groups, says very few vehicles are getting through — “maybe 100 a day, sometimes none.”
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Ahmad Mohammad Shannan, from Jabalia in Gaza’s north, told NPR that to escape the fighting in the north in the war’s early weeks, he went south to Khan Younis, Gaza’s second-largest city. When that city became the focus of fighting in recent days, Shannan came to Rafah.
According to Touma, the UNRWA planned to temporarily house 150,000 people in 50 shelters before the war.
Now, more than half of Gaza’s total population, 1.2 million people, is at 150 shelters run by the agency. Most of the people are crammed into a quarter of the territory, less than 40 square miles.
“So our teams are stretched to the limit,” she says. “Our capacities are stretched. We’re overwhelmed. It is more than we have planned for and it is also more than what we have.
Shaban el Hoof told NPR he was told to move to the south because of the intensity of the shelling.
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The fighting has led to people being displaced, because there are no safe zones. “And probably the most unique component is that there is no escape valve.”
With fighting to the north, Israel to the east, the Mediterranean Sea to the west and Egypt’s closed border with Gaza in the south, people have nowhere to go, Spiegel says.
He says there is no space for people to flee because of the bombardment and massive fighting in a small area.
In two incidents last month, Doctors Without Borders came under direct Israeli fire twice within a matter of days, the head of operations for the group, Michel Lacharité, says.
A soldier shot at a group of people with the abbreviation for the group’s French name on their vehicles.
Israel’s military has not addressed the MSF attacks directly but has said that it “recognizes the importance of the special protections given to medical teams under international humanitarian law and takes action to prevent harm to them.”
Just over a week after the fragile truce between Israel and Hamas collapsed, the World Health Organization’s executive board adopted a resolution in a special session on Sunday to protect health care in Gaza and seek the unfettered movement of humanitarian and medical assistance.
“I think we all agree that this is a meeting we would rather not be having,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in his opening address.
Some countries have denounced the attacks on Israel by Hamas that resulted in the deaths of 1200 people and the taking of many hostages. Still, those nations that had asked to hold Sunday’s meeting explained their request came out of growing alarm over the deepening humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
Israel’s permanent representative to the United Nations inGeneva spoke early today about the wars in Yemen, Syria and Sudan, and said that the session is the first of its kind in the city. “Do the victims of those conflicts matter less, or does the world play by a different rulebook when it comes to Israel?”
The war has had an effect on the medical infrastructure, with at least 499 attacks on healthcare in Gaza and the West Bank according to the World Health Organization. 13 of the 36 hospitals that were operating in the enclave are currently partially functional. There is an overwhelming medical demand, due to both the conflict and everyday health needs. For instance, WHO said that more than 180 women are giving birth in Gaza each day.
The Indonesian delegation regretted that the UN Security Council failed to vote on a cease-fire. Several countries spoke in support of a cease-fire at Sunday’s gathering. The delegation of Barbados stressed that health is a human right, one that was in part established 75 years ago Sunday when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was signed.
Once the resolution was adopted at the end of the day, there was sustained applause. Tedros complimented those who had gathered for achieving a milestone — “the first consensus resolution on the conflict… since it began two months ago.”
He acknowledges that it is not possible to give sustained humanitarian assistance of the scale needed without a cease-fire.
