GAZA: Israel has been bombarding and besieging Gaza since the territory's ruling group Hamas launched a surprise attack against Israeli border communities on October 7, 2023. The Hamas attack killed 1,200 people, according to Israel, while Gazan authorities say the ensuing Israeli offensive has killed more than 53,000 people. Israeli authorities have repeatedly said there is enough food in Gaza to feed the population and accuse Hamas of stealing aid in order to feed its fighters and to maintain control over the territory, an accusation the group denies.
This week Israel started allowing some food to enter the territory for the first time since March 2, including flour and baby food but it says a new US-sponsored system run by private contractors will begin operating soon. The plan will involve distribution centres in areas controlled by Israeli troops, a plan the U.N. and aid agencies have attacked, saying it will lead to further displacement of the population and that aid should flow through existing networks.
Mervat Hijazi said her family had seen no sign yet of the new aid and she is consumed by worry for her baby, Lama, who was 5 kg when weighed last week. That's about half the average for a healthy one-year-old girl according to World Health Organization charts. This week the family have had, at most, a single meal a day to share, the mother added. UN aid chief Tom Fletcher said this week that the amount of aid Israel was proposing to allow into Gaza was "a drop in the ocean" of what was needed.
The tent shared by Hijazi and her children is large and rectangular with a portrait of their dead husband and father Mohammed hanging on one side above a thin mattress and some mostly empty jars and stacked plastic bowls. The family is from the Sabra district of Gaza City, in the north of the enclave, where Israel's first assault was concentrated. They decided to flee the district on the day Mohammed was killed - November 17, 2023. They went south to the central Gazan area of Deir al Balah, first staying with family and then moving to an encampment for the displaced.
Israeli air strikes killed at least six Palestinians guarding aid trucks against looters, Hamas officials said, as the head of the United Nations warned that only a "teaspoon" of aid was getting in following Israel's 11-week-long blockade. The Israeli military said 107 trucks carrying flour and other foodstuffs as well as medical supplies entered the Gaza Strip from the Kerem Shalom crossing point on Thursday, for a total of 305 since Monday when the blockade was relaxed.
But getting the supplies to people sheltering in tents and other makeshift accommodation has been fitful and UN officials say at least 500 to 600 trucks of aid are needed every day. So far, an umbrella network of Palestinian aid groups said, 119 aid trucks have got past the Kerem Shalom crossing point and into Gaza since Israel eased its blockade on Monday in the face of an international outcry.
The UN World Food Programme said 15 trucks carrying flour to WFP-supported bakeries had been looted, which it said reflected the dire conditions facing Gazans. "Hunger, desperation and anxiety over whether more food aid is coming is contributing to rising insecurity," it said in a statement. A Hamas official said six members of a security team tasked with guarding the shipments were killed. Israel imposed the blockade in early March, accusing Hamas of stealing aid meant for civilians. Hamas rejects the charge, saying a number of its own fighters have been killed protecting the trucks from armed looters.
With most of Gaza's 2 million population squeezed into an ever narrowing zone on the coast and in the area around the southern city of Khan Yunis by Israel's military operation, international pressure to get aid in quickly has ratcheted up. "Without rapid, reliable, safe and sustained aid access, more people will die - and the long-term consequences on the entire population will be profound," said UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres. — Reuters
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