The aid ship is in the middle of a testing a sea corridor for Gaza
First delivery of aid to northern Gaza by the World Food Programme: a message to the Palestinian people and to the leaders of the Kneipp-Morse regime
On Tuesday, the World Food Programme was able to deliver its first convoy of aid to northern Gaza in three weeks, using an Israeli military road that runs along the Gaza border fence to reach the area.
Abeer said that the aid from the convoy was distributed quickly and close to the fence to keep the crowds from jumping on trucks. The convoy included one truck full of flour and five carrying food packages. The delivery came after six days of intensive negotiations, she said.
“The significance of this is that it revives the hope of continued access to northern Gaza over land,” Ms. Etefa said. “It’s a good step, but we just hope that it doesn’t end up being a one-off.”
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The Gaza Strip has been a big security problem since Israel cut off Gaza in October, according to U.N. Secretary of State Josep Borrell
Last week, President Biden announced the military will build a floating pier for aid deliveries off Gaza’s coast, as his administration has grown frustrated urging the Israeli government to enable humanitarian relief to reach the population in the enclave. The pier is not ready for several weeks.
One major issue is that Israel doesn’t allow aid agencies to purchase any goods within Israel or the occupied West Bank or to import them through Israeli ports, as part of its post-Oct. 7 policy to cut off Gaza.
In a separate mission, a humanitarian ship is pulling a barge loaded with food for Gaza, which is expected to arrive this week. Humanitarian-chef José Andrés’ World Central Kitchen, a charity that provides food in disaster zones, says it is constructing a jetty to unload it and then put it onto trucks for delivery.
The Gaza Strip has created a big security problem as people are desperate for food and often the best are able to take what little aid gets in.
Speaking to the U.N. Security Council in New York on Tuesday, Josep Borrell, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, said the humanitarian crisis is “man-made, and when we look for alternative ways of providing support by sea, by air, we have to remind that we have to do it because the natural way of providing support through roads is being closed.”
When we condemned what was happening in Ukraine, we have to say the same thing for what is happening in Gaza.
Since the start of the war in October, Israeli attacks in Gaza have destroyed most of its infrastructure, while Israel’s restrictions on food and medicine entering by truck have left most of the enclave at risk of famine and vulnerable to disease, according to the U.N.
Malnutrition is particularly acute in northern Gaza, which has been largely cut off by Israeli forces over the last five months and where UNICEF says 1 in 6 children under the age of 2 is acutely malnourished.
Abed Amin and his family have not received aid since the beginning of the war over five months ago. Sometimes he borrows money from his friends to buy canned mushrooms or olives at a steep price on the black market. But these days, they mostly grind animal feed to a sort of flour.
Taghreed Al Khoudary was a mother of four daughters in northern Gaza and before the war she made her children have dinner whenever they wanted. She has had to teach her daughters to eat just one loaf of bread a day.
An air dropped package landed on the roof of her home. The boxes of food were found after Khoudary rushed up. She turned around and found a large crowd behind her, some were armed, and many of them were holding knives.
“What we need to do is flood the north with food so it doesn’t become a very prized commodity. If people in the north could see the fact that on a daily basis there was regular supplies of trucks of food, medicine and other key commodities, I think the desperation would not be there. The insecurity wouldn’t be there either,” McGoldrick says.
Israel’s efforts in Gaza have failed to solve the problems of humanitarian operations in the Gaza Strip, says a U.N. spokesman
“Israel is doing everything it can to find ways to give aid to the inhabitants of Gaza,” says Israel’s spokesman for government activities in the Territories. “And we’ve gone through to great lengths to increase our capacity of inspection in order to facilitate additional aid.”
Israel has blamed delays on U.N. agencies. The U.N. has said Israeli forces have not just delayed approval for truck convoys, but turned away key aid to northern Gaza and attacked its staff and facilities.
There is a protest taking place at the Nitzana crossing on the Egyptian-Israeli border where all trucks heading to Gaza stop for Israeli inspection, and one of the organizers said that the fact that they had to do airdrops shows that we are succeeding. There were no trucks to be inspected that day due to the sit-in.
Friedman says any problems with the distribution and flow of aid are the fault of aid organizations for not having enough “manpower” to deal with the demand.
But the Association of International Development Agencies, whose members include dozens of nongovernmental aid groups operating in the region, says Israel’s Welfare Ministry stopped renewing visas for humanitarian workers in early February.
There are a number of factors in Israeli policy that affect the flow of aid to the Palestinians, according to the director of public advocacy.
“Before Oct. 7, the aid agencies that were active in the area were only sourcing goods through Israel. Having to purchase all of their goods in Egypt or import goods that they need is a hinderance to aid operations, says Marmur.
Then there is the fuel cap Israel imposes, which affects every aspect of humanitarian operation, including communication, because of the electrical blackout.
They need to allow the humanitarians unfettered access. We have many de confliction issues and that’s not happening often enough. “We have many issues that have been notified in advance. At the same time, we get blocked or we get diverted or maintained. Some trucks have been hit by military fire.
Georgios Petropoulos, who heads the U.N. humanitarian coordination sub-office in Gaza, describes what he recently saw driving around in the Gaza Strip as “profoundly grotesque.”
Civil defense vehicles were destroyed. I saw ambulances cut in half by machine gun fire. I saw primary health care centers shut up, at the same time that you have a war of such acute aggression and violence in such a contained area,” Petropoulos says.
If we can open other entry points around Israel that can double or triple the amount of trucks entering Gaza every single day it will be easy to solve the problem. “For various reasons this is not happening and it’s out of our control.”
To increase its number of kitchens in Gaza to 100, World Central Kitchen plans to use its distribution network and increase the number of kitchens it has in the area. Andrés says so far the aid organization has provided more than 35 million meals there.
Last week, the United Kingdom’s foreign secretary, David Cameron, told the House of Lords that the amount of aid allowed into Gaza last month was half of that received in January, adding that the patience of Israel’s allies with the humanitarian crisis was “wearing thin.”
In order to get more aid from Israel the United States has decided to set up a floating dock to deliver aid in larger ships. The project is likely to take several weeks and still faces severe obstacles in widely distributing the aid.
Jordan has taken the lead in airdropping aid into Gaza, along with the United States and other partner countries. But the airdrops are extremely expensive, and with ongoing fighting, they are difficult to target and almost impossible to distribute on the ground.
A spokesman for the National Center for Security and Crisis Management in Jordan says that there are over 30,000 trucks that are waiting for entry into Egypt.
The Gaza Strip jetty: An ongoing problem for Israel and the armies of the Jordanian government in the presence of an Israeli barge
Jordan, which has a peace treaty with Israel, has accused the Israeli military of deliberately targeting its field hospitals in Gaza. Israel has claimed that it was trying to hit Hamas.
It’s expected that the mission will take several days because of the slow speed of the barge and the logistics of building the floating jetty.
“We have to be cautious and we have to follow all the protocols that we have in order to have a good end to this,” she says, adding there is food waiting at the port in Cyprus for an immediate second trip if the first goes well.
Lanuza says that each box of food was scanned individually in order to ensure that it did not contain any illegal substances and the shipment was sealed.
Laura Lanuza, communications director for Open Arms, said it takes three weeks to get everything sorted out after the boat arrives in Cyprus.
“We have crews working 24-7 and we are really trying to build this 60-meter [yard]-long jetty that will allow us then successfully, if things go well, to start bringing in humanitarian aid in bigger quantities,” Andrés says.
Since Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip in 2007, an Israeli blockade and five months of intense Israeli bombing has devastated all of the infrastructure in the area.
The diplomatic technicality is already behind us, says Andrés. The construction of a temporary jetty is the most difficult part at this time.
Aid groups are scrambling to find alternate ways to deliver aid to Gaza because of Israeli restrictions, but they have had to rely on the cooperation of Israel to get aid to Gaza.
