A UN aid convoy carrying life-saving supplies for Gazans is awaiting Israel’s permission to enter the war-devastated Palestinian territory, where one in every five people faces starvation in the wake of about three-month-old Israeli blockade.
Israel said it would allow some aid to flow into Gaza after its 11-week blockade, which, according to world aid bodies has produced a famine-like situation on the besieged strip.
Existing supplies of the basic necessities have been running dangerously low and on Wednesday the UN Children’s Fund said that its nutrition stocks to prevent increasing malnutrition “are almost gone”.
“Humanitarian assistance is being weaponized to serve and support political and military objectives,” said Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA.
Last week reports of the resumption of talks between Israel and the Palestinian militant organization Hamas raised hopes of revival of aid supplies but European Humanitarian Forum, Lazzarini said that significant stocks of aid remain blocked at the enclave’s borders.
“UNRWA is a lifeline for people in the face of immense needs,” he said Wednesday.
The development comes a day after UN humanitarians said that they had been allowed to send “around 100” more aid trucks loaded with supplies into Gaza. It is understood that several dozen additional trucks entered the enclave on Tuesday at Kerem Shalom where they await further Israeli permissions before the aid they are carrying can move further into Gaza, the UN said.
While welcoming the transportation of relief supplies to Gazans aid workers have said that in the face of the humanitarian situation, the assistance is just a fraction of the 500 trucks that entered the enclave every day before the war erupted in Gaza in October 2023.
World Food Program said more than 130,000 tons of food wait at border crossings.
Under pressure from several European powers over blockade and new military operation in Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would allow resumption of basic aid to Gazans.
He also said this week that Israel would control all of Gaza and would prevent the militant Islamist group Hamas from looting aid.
Antoine Renard, Country Director WFP Palestine says even 100 trucks a day would only meet “the very minimum” of people’s food needs for the month:
“On the ground, the situation is growing more desperate and the risk of insecurity and looting of human goods becomes even greater, as we speak a bag of wheat flour costs $500 in Gaza.”
Markets are “severely paralyzed”, supply chains have collapsed and prices have spiked, WFP said.
“Several essential food items, including eggs and frozen meat, have disappeared from the market,” it said. “Wheat flour has reached exorbitant prices, with increases of over 3,000 per cent compared to pre-conflict levels and more than 4,000 per cent” compared to the ceasefire period from January to March.
While the Gazan economy is now in “near-total paralysis”, the West Bank is also staring down a deep recession, with combined overall output shrunk by 27 per cent.
Given that this is the deepest contraction in the Occupied Palestinian Territory in over a generation, WFP cited projections that Gaza will require 13 years to recover to pre-crisis levels and the West Bank three years.
The war in Gaza started soon after the Hamas attack on Israeli southern parts on October 7, 2023. According to Israeli officials, Hamas, which the U.S. has declared a terrorist organization, killed 1200 people. Their fighters also took around 250 people as hostages.
Since then there have been two ceasefires and Hamas has released dozens of hostages in exchange for freedom of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails.
According to Israeli health officials, Israeli bombardment has killed more than 53,000 Palestinians including a large number of women and children.
