Getting food to the starving population of Gaza is a problem with aid going to it
The World Food Program announces the arrival of a Gazan aid convoy in the coming days at the Gaza border crossing crossing crossing point: A response of frustration and frustration
For five months, aid groups had been able to reach northern Gaza only by entering through one of two southern border crossings, and then attempting a difficult and hazardous drive to the north. Few had successfully made the trip to distribution points. After the convoy on Tuesday cleared Israeli inspection, it crossed into Gaza through a gate on a security fence that had not previously been used for aid deliveries, the Israeli military said.
To avoid the risk of crowds jumping on trucks to grab supplies, the aid from the northern convoy was distributed quickly and close to the fence, said Abeer Etefa, a spokeswoman for the World Food Program. The convoy had a truck full of flour and five 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.”
The Gaza Crisis: How Much Aid is Needed and How Much is Left in the Gaza Strip? A U.N. Security Council Report on a Democratic Israeli Prime Minister
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President Biden made the announcement last week that the military will build a floating pier for aid deliveries off Gaza’s coast, as he and his administration have grown frustrated trying to get the Israeli government to allow humanitarian relief to reach the population in the enclave. But the pier won’t be ready for several weeks.
Any way to bring aid through sea or air is helpful. The main part of it needs to be done by road. That’s the only way we can deliver bulk and at scale to populations inside Gaza, especially in the north,” McGoldrick told NPR.
WCK has been providing meals in Gaza since the start of the war, and once it builds the jetty, will unload the cargo onto smaller boats to take the aid ashore to be distributed to its network of 64 kitchens.
Mass starvation in Gaza has also created a big security problem, where people are desperate for any food, and usually the strongest are able to access what little aid gets in.
Speaking at the UN, the European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said the humanitarian crisis is man-made and that when we look for alternative ways of providing support by air, we need to remind.
Israel says it needs to ensure that weapons are not being smuggled into Gaza. But the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, told the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday that starvation is being used as a weapon of war.
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.
According to the Health Ministry in Gaza, at least 23 children and four adults have died of malnutrition and dehydration at hospitals in northern Gaza. If aid doesn’t reach the people immediately, there will be an explosion of child deaths.
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. Sometimes he borrows money from his friends to buy canned mushrooms or olives at a steep price on the black market. They grind the animal feed to a sort of flour.
Taghreed Al Khoudary was the mother of four daughters in northern Gaza and she says before the war, she spoiled them. She had to teach her daughters how to survive on one loaf of bread a day.
Recently, an airdropped package landed on the roof of her two-story home. He rushed up and found boxes of food. Then, she turned around and saw a large crowd behind her, some had climbed up, many of them holding knives and some were even armed, she said.
We should flood the north with food so that it doesn’t become a very prized commodity. I think desperation would be gone if people in the north could see that there was a constant supply of trucks of food, medicine, and other key commodities. McGoldrick says the insecurity wouldn’t be there.
“Why are we relying on feeding over 1.5 million displaced people through one gate, when you have disruptions to that gate because of demonstrations that block it for days?” says McGoldrick. He says Israel should open the Ashdod border crossing into northern Gaza.
Israeli protesters are blocking aid trucks from entering Gaza because they want to make sure Hamas releases hostages from Israel.
“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 prevented trucks from being inspected.
The impact of Israel policy on aid operations in the Gaza Strip: The United Nations’ humanitarian operations in a situation of crisis, and civilian health care centers are shut up
Aid organizations are to blame for problems with aid distribution because they don’t have enough power to deal with demand.
The Association of International Development Agencies, which includes dozens of aid groups in the region, said that the Welfare Ministry stopped renewing visas for humanitarian workers in February.
The flow of aid is directly affected by several factors including Israeli policy, according to M. Marmur, the director of public advocacy at Gisha, an Israeli nonprofit that monitors the rights of Palestinians.
Prior to October 7 the aid agencies in the area were only using Israel to source their goods. So, the adjustment of having to purchase all of their goods in Egypt or import goods that they need has in itself been a hindering factor and is impacting aid operations,” Marmur says.
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 the humanitarians unfettered access. And that’s not happening often enough or we have many deconfliction issues,” McGoldrick says. We have many issues that were notified in advance. At the same time, we get blocked or we get diverted or maintained. Some trucks have been hit by military fire.
“Driving around in the Gaza Strip is grotesque,” says the U.N. humanitarian coordination sub-office head.
Civil defense vehicles were destroyed. The ambulances were 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, we can double or triple the amount of trucks that come into Gaza every single day. “But for various reasons this is not happening and this is out of our control.”
World Central Kitchen: A Floating Dock to Deliver Aid by Sea to Gaza, in a Test of a Sea Corridor for the Gaza Enclave
Enter World Central Kitchen, founded in the US by celebrity chef Jose Andrés. The organization has partnership with Open Arms, a Spanish charity that is using the same name. Funding for the food came from the U. A.D., while Cyprus provided logistical help.
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.”
The United States insists it is pressing Israel to allow in more aid by land but has announced it plans to set up a floating dock to deliver aid by sea in bigger ships. The project is likely to take several weeks and face many challenges in distributing the aid.
The United States and other partner countries have led airdropping aid into the Gaza Strip. But the airdrops are extremely expensive, and with ongoing fighting, they are difficult to target and almost impossible to distribute on the ground.
The main land entry for aid to Gaza through Egypt has 30,000 trucks backed up waiting for entry, says Ahmed Naimat, a spokesman for Jordan’s National Center for Security and Crisis Management.
Jordan, which has a peace treaty with Israel, claims the Israeli military is targeting its field hospitals in Gaza. Israel has said it was aiming at Hamas militants.
The mission, which began Tuesday, is expected to take several days because of the slow speed necessitated by the heavily laden barge, and the logistics of building the floating jetty.
The Israeli response to the 2001 Gaza conflict: Getting aid into Gaza by land, air and sea and how much is going on in the Gazan port?
She said there is food waiting at the port in Cyprus for an immediate second trip if the first trip goes well, so they have to be cautious.
Lanuza says the entire shipment was sealed after it was individually scanned at the Larnaca port in Cyprus to make sure that it did not have something in it.
Laura Lanuza, communications director for Open Arms, says it has taken three weeks to deal with regulations, restrictions and logistics after the boat arrived 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.
Israel destroyed what was left of Gaza’s airport during the 2001 Palestinian uprising, and since October has destroyed what is left of Gaza’s fishing port.
“The most difficult part, the diplomatic technicalities, already is kind of behind us,” Andrés says. “The most difficult part ahead is as we speak, we are finalizing the construction of a temporary jetty.”
Since Israeli restrictions on aid to Gaza have made it hard for aid groups to deliver it, they have relied on Israeli cooperation to get aid to Gaza, while also trying to find other ways to transport it.
The Israeli military supports new initiatives to get humanitarian aid into Gaza by land, air and sea, just hours after the military spokesman said it was trying to flood the enclave.
Dahlia Scheindlin, an Israeli political analyst and a columnist at Haaretz, said that Israel is coming under pressure from all sides and that images emerging from Gaza of emaciated, starving children may have been “a tipping point” for policymakers. “There’s a limit to how much opprobrium Israel is willing to take and stand behind and say we are in the right,” she said.
Getting Aid by Sea: Why Airdrops Are Ineffective, How Symbolic is Their Effectiveness? An Analysis of the Case of Warfare
Airdrops are ineffective and largely symbolic, these groups say, able to deliver just a fraction of the food that a truck convoy can haul. Setting up the infrastructure for maritime aid deliveries by sea will be expensive and take a long time.
