BOTTLENECKS AND SAFETY CONCERNS HINDER GAZA AID
Experts say a larger, more sustained flow of supplies needed
The trucks carrying aid for the Gaza Strip stop for exhaustive inspections by Israeli authorities. They can pass through two border crossings only during limited hours. Inside the territory, vehicles travel over a landscape of rubble and ruined roads to distribute the aid to desperate, hungry crowds.
These obstacles are contributing to a growing humanitarian crisis, according to aid officials and two U.S. senators who recently visited Rafah, one of the two crossings into Gaza that is open for aid trucks. Aid groups and the United Nations warn that the risk of famine is widening, that the territory’s health care system is collapsing and that contagious diseases are spreading rapidly.
Israel has been bombarding and besieging Gaza since Oct. 7, when Hamas and other armed Palestinian groups raided Israel, killing about 1,200 people, according to Israeli officials. The war has damaged the roads the trucks use to travel and crippled the communications networks that are essential for coordinating aid distribution. Israel’s siege has dried up almost all the fuel and cut off electricity.
Fighting and Israeli airstrikes have killed about 23,000 people in Gaza, according to health officials in Gaza, including more than 150 aid workers, according to the U.N. and aid groups, who say the war prevents others from being able to report for duty.
Aid groups say the trucks sometimes come under fire from Israeli forces, despite their efforts to coordinate the convoys with the Israeli military in advance.
“The humanitarian community has been left with the impossible mission of supporting more than 2 million people, even as its own staff are being killed and displaced, as communication blackouts continue, as roads are damaged and convoys are shot at,” Martin Griffiths, the top U.N. humanitarian chief, said in a statement last week.
A spokesperson for Israel’s military, Nir Dinar, rejected claims that aid convoys had come under Israeli fire.
Warehouses meant to store aid have become shelters for displaced people; desperate Palestinians loot the warehouses that remain and pull food from trucks.
The civilians who take the supplies “are desperate and angry and need food,” said Dr. Guillemette Thomas, a medical coordinator based in Jerusalem for Doctors Without Borders, echoing warnings by U.N. officials who say a larger and more sustained flow of aid is needed.
Israeli officials, who insist that there is enough food and water for civilians in Gaza, have blamed the U.N., saying it should find more staff, extend workers’ hours and deploy more trucks to distribute the aid. The officials say the military coordinates with aid groups to arrange safe passage for convoys, and announces daily pauses in the fighting for Palestinians to collect aid.
Under U.S. pressure, Israel reopened a second crossing to Gaza, Kerem Shalom, in mid-December, allowing aid trucks through.
Col. Moshe Tetro, the head of the Israeli government administration that liaises with Gaza, told reporters at the Kerem Shalom crossing Wednesday that Israel had done its part by increasing its capacity for inspecting aid.
“The bottleneck, as I see it, is the capability of the international organizations inside Gaza to receive this aid,” he said. He added, “I’m sure that when we see the other side being more effective, we will see more movement.”