There is a daily tactical pause in the area to get aid into Gaza

The Gaza War: Israel, Hamas, and the U.N. During a “Tactical Stop” in the Gaza Strip

JERUSALEM — The Israeli military on Sunday announced a “tactical pause” in its offensive in the southern Gaza Strip to allow the deliveries of increased quantities of humanitarian aid.

The pause is aimed at allowing aid trucks to reach the nearby Israel-controlled Kerem Shalom crossing, the main entry point for incoming aid, and travel safely to the Salah a-Din highway, a main north-south road, to deliver supplies to other parts of Gaza, the military said. It said the pause was being coordinated with the U.N. and international aid agencies.

The flow of aid in southern Gaza declined just as the humanitarian need grew. More than 1 million Palestinians, many of whom had already been displaced, fled Rafah after the invasion, crowding into other parts of southern and central Gaza. Most now languish in ramshackle tent camps, using trenches as latrines, with open sewage in the streets.

From May 6 until June 6, the U.N. received an average of 68 trucks of aid a day, according to figures from the U.N. humanitarian office, known as OCHA. That was far below the 500 trucks a day that aid groups say are needed.

The pace of deliveries has been slowed by Israel because they have to allow drivers to travel to the site. Due to a lack of security, aid trucks in some cases have also been looted by crowds as they moved along Gaza’s roads.

A spokesman for COGAT said it was the UN’s fault that cargos were stacked up on the Gaza side. He said that the agencies have logistical problems that they haven’t fixed.

The U.N. denies such allegations. It says the fighting between Israel and Hamas makes it very dangerous for U.N. trucks to travel to Kerem Shalom.

The War Cabinet Is Left In The Inner Circle: The Israel Daytime Pause in Combat Appears to Take Hold in Gaza (Evidence by Scott Anderson)

The new arrangement aims to reduce the need for coordinating deliveries by providing an 11-hour uninterrupted window each day for trucks to move in and out of the crossing.

The policy applies only to a seven-mile stretch of road in southern Gaza, and not to areas in central Gaza to which hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians have fled since the Rafah invasion began.

The prosecutors at the International Criminal Court have accused Israel’s leaders of restrictions on aid delivery and of using starvation as a weapon of war. And aid groups said the fighting near the Kerem Shalom crossing made it even harder for aid groups to collect the food from the border and then distribute it onward through Gaza.

“Before Rafah, we had free access to Kerem Shalom basically all day, every day,” said Scott Anderson, the deputy Gaza director for UNRWA, the lead United Nations agency for Palestinians. He said it was harder to get there now, due to gunfights and explosion in areas which aid trucks traverse, as well as the fact that convoys recently came within 100 yards of fighting.

“What we had asked for was windows to access Kerem Shalom without having to coordinate so closely with the I.D.F. — to be able to come and go, and the trucks to come and go, with more freedom,” said Mr. Anderson, using the initials of the Israel Defense Forces.

The military said on Monday that it had killed more than 500 people in Rafah, which reduced the capacity of two Hamas battalions in the city. The remaining two battalions were operating at a “medium level,” the military said.

Source: Israeli Daytime Pause in Combat Appears to Take Hold in Gaza

Progress of the flooded world with ready to eat foods, and what needed we can do to sustain it in the coming era of rapid food shortages

“We really flooded the place with ready-to-eat food commodities,” he added. This progress needs to be sustained and that is what we need to do.