The aid was delivered in the first sea shipment
Gaza’s WFP: An Israel border crossing attempt to distribute food and necessities to the Gazan people after the Oct. 7 outbreak of the first-ever Gaza war
Israel has allowed a small convoy carrying food to enter northern Gaza directly through an Israeli border crossing for the first time since the war began on Oct. 7, as global pressure intensifies to let more desperately needed aid into the territory, where hundreds of thousands are at risk of starvation.
The security problem is caused by the fact that people are desperate for food and the strongest are usually able to get some.
Aid groups are not getting much aid into Gaza by land. That is prompting multinational efforts to deliver food and necessities by sea and air. The U.S. military has planned to build a floating pier in order to deliver aid to Gaza which doesn’t have a functioning port.
The WFP wasn’t so fortunate last week: In its first attempt since February, it tried and failed to distribute aid to northern Gaza on March 5. The convoy of food was turned away by the soldiers after 3 hours at the Wadi Gaza checkpoint, which separates the northern and southern parts of the enclave. After being rerouted, the convoy was stopped by a large crowd of desperate people who looted about 200 tons of food, the U.N. food agency said.
The first sea shipment of the World Central Kitchen in Gaza: It’s a pilot and not a one-off, says Ms. Etefa
Ms. von der Leyen told reporters in Cyprus that the first sea shipment was a pilot and that others would follow soon.
It was not known how the shipment of World Central Kitchen would be unloaded and distributed once it reached the shores of Gaza. The group’s founder, José Andrés, the renowned Spanish American chef, said over the weekend that it had started to build a jetty in Gaza to receive the aid, but the group would not specify where the structure was located.
The usual sailing time between Cyprus and Gaza is 15 to 17 hours, officials and aid groups said, but they added that the Open Arms was likely to take longer because of its heavy load.
A ship carrying food was in the water, the group said. The United Arab Emirate was helping with financing and logistical support.
More than 34 million meals were served in Gaza by cooks and organizers working with the World Central Kitchen. The organization has established 65 community kitchens in the territory, which are managed by Palestinians, and has plans for at least 35 more, Mr. Andrés said. About 350,000 meals are being served every day, but Mr. Andrés said he would like to distribute more than a million meals a day.
The aid was distributed close to the fence so people wouldn’t jump on the trucks to get supplies. The convoy included one truck full of flour and five carrying food packages. The delivery came after six days of intensive negotiations, she said.
Ms. Etefa believes that this brings back the hope of continued access to northern Gaza over land. “It’s a good step, but we just hope that it doesn’t end up being a one-off.”
The Times’ Comment on Hamas’ Attack on the Gazan Regime, a Human Rights Defender’s Perspective and the U.N. Security Council
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Speaking to the UN Security Council on Tuesday, Josep Borrell said the humanitarian crisis is man-made and that we should look for alternative ways of providing support by air.
The same words must be used for what is happening in Gaza and what is happening in Ukranian.
When Israel launched its air, sea and ground offensive, in response to the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack on the country, it targeted northern Gaza first. The north has remained largely cut off since. But the U.N. estimates up to 300,000 people remain there under some of the worst conditions in Gaza, with little to no access to food and water and barely functioning hospitals.
Abed Amin, a 35-year-old who lives in Gaza City and takes care of his three sisters, says he and his family have not received any aid since the start of the war over five months ago. He takes money from his friends to purchase canned mushrooms and olives at a steep price on the black market. They grind animal feed to a kind of flour.
The mother of four girls says she made her children eat anything they wanted for dinner before the war. Now, she has had to teach her daughters to survive on one loaf of bread a day.
Recently, an airdropped package landed on the roof of her two-story home. The man rushed up to find boxes of food. She realized that a large crowd of people were behind her, many of them holding knives, she said.
“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. McGoldrick says the insecurity wouldn’t be there.
McGoldrick says Israel needs to open more border crossings, increase its ability to inspect aid trucks and allow aid groups access to secure roads in northern Gaza.
Aid trucks to Gaza have also been stalled by Israeli protesters, who want nothing to go in until Hamas releases hostages taken from Israel during the Oct. 7 attack.
“The fact that they’ve had to do airdrops shows that we are succeeding,” said Debby Sharon, one of the organizers for the protest at Nitzana crossing on the Egypt-Israel border, where all the trucks heading to Gaza stop for Israeli inspection. The sit-in that day earlier this month prevented any trucks from getting inspected.
The problem is in the aid and humanitarian operations in the Gazan area, according to Miriam Marmur, the director of public advocacy at Gisha
Friedman says that aid organizations don’t have enough power to handle the demand for aid, so that’s where the problem is.
The Association of International Development Agencies says Israel’s Welfare Ministry stopped renewing visas for humanitarian workers in February.
Miriam Marmur, the director of public advocacy at Gisha, an Israeli nonprofit organization that monitors the rights of Palestinians with a focus on Gaza, says there are several factors in current Israeli policy that directly affect the flow of aid.
Before Oct. 7, the aid agencies in the area used to only deal with Israel. It has been found that the adjustment of having to purchase all of their goods in Egypt or import goods that they need is impacting aid operations.
Then there is the fuel cap Israel imposes, which affects every aspect of humanitarian operation, including communication, because of the electrical blackout.
They have a responsibility to allow humanitarians unrestricted access. It’s not happening enough or we have a lot of deconfliction issues. “We have many issues that have been notified in advance. At the same time, we get blocked or we get diverted or maintained. Some of the trucks have been hit by military fire.
According to the UN’s humanitarian coordination sub-office in Gaza, what he saw recently was “profoundly grotesque.”
“I could see civil defense vehicles annihilated. 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.
