Gazans face starvation amid Israeli bombings

Advertisements

Two million people are facing starvation in Gaza.

All eyes have been on the spot where the trucks are supposed to be taking or getting the food to the people. That is not happening, BBC reports.

Since yesterday, the trucks have been waiting and waiting and this morning it’s the same situation.

Even 100 trucks are not going to make a huge difference, because Gaza has been without food for 11 weeks.

If you look at pictures people have posted from the markets, they’re almost empty, there is no fruit, vegetables, no protein, no meat, no chicken in Gaza.

And most importantly, no fuel to run the generators in the hospital. No medicine into Gaza. 25% of the water in Gaza is contaminated and not drinkable.

So the situation remains very catastrophic.

On Sunday, Israel agreed to allow a limited amount of aid into Gaza, ending its 11-week blockade.

Israel said 93 trucks carrying aid were transferred to Gaza on Tuesday, a much higher figure than the five trucks that crossed the day before.

However, the UN has said that aid has yet to reach the civilian population.

According to the UN, Israeli authorities required the UN trucks to offload their supplies on the Palestinian side of the Kerem Shalom crossing, which is located on the border with southern Gaza.

UN teams inside Gaza were unable to collect the aid on Tuesday after waiting several hours for the Israeli green light to access the holding area.

There are five other crossing points controlled by Israeli forces – Kissufim and Gate 96, which are on the border with central Gaza; Erez and Erez West, which are on the border with northern Gaza; and the Rafah crossing with Egypt, which has been closed since Israeli forces seized it a year ago.

Antoine Renard, a senior World Food Programme official, tells the BBC that problems with aid distribution in Gaza arose because the IDF wanted trucks to move inside Gaza along a route that aid agencies considered to be dangerous and where they could be at risk of attack by desperately hungry civilians and armed criminal gangs.

“At market prices in Gaza right now,” says Renard, “each truck full of flour is worth around U$400,000”. What is needed, to make sure the trucks reach the right areas, is “hundreds of trucks daily” travelling along a safe route to warehouses, as happened in the previous ceasefire, he says.

“The less we provide, the greater the risk and more anxiety created” among the population.

Aid agencies on the Gaza side do not employ armed guards to accompany their cargoes because it is considered too dangerous, so a lengthy ceasefire and an increase to the current five-day window for the transfer of food is urgently needed, Renard tells me.

On the controversial Israeli American proposals to employ a privately-run company to distribute aid in Gaza, rather than the already-established UN agencies and their affiliate bodies, the WFP says it would be “forcing 2.1 million people to travel long distances” for food.

“This plan is not a solution, it’s a political decision,” says Renard. “The food should go to the people, not the people to the food.”