The Palestinians cannot leave the Gaza Strip, they have limited opportunities to grow food and access to the Mediterranean and its fish has been restricted after an Israeli ban in July. In principle, all food therefore needs to be shipped in from the outside, through Israeli intermediaries.
Heavily criticized Israeli-American Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which handles almost all food distribution on the strip, stated last week that the organization has distributed between 1 and 1.7 million meals per day. This after the Israeli military decided on "tactical" local pauses in the fighting, to allow humanitarian aid through humanitarian corridors.
A meager meal
But with a population of around 2.1 million people, the humanitarian aid from GHF does not even correspond to one meal per person and day. Furthermore, it is reported that many hundreds of Palestinians have been shot dead in connection with the distribution of humanitarian aid, which has led international organizations to condemn GHF's work on the Gaza Strip. Among other things, Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, accuses GHF of driving the humanitarian crisis.
"Everything has been further deepened by preventing Unrwa, the backbone of the humanitarian effort, from bringing any aid to Gaza for five months now (since March 2)", Lazzarini writes on X.
Unrwa is the UN agency that previously handled aid to the Palestinians, before Israel banned the organization and gave the newly created GHF the right to distribution.
Accuses the UN
Now Israel - which has had military control over the short border strip between Egypt and Gaza since last year - says it is allowing aid in, and claims that the UN is not doing enough to get the aid where it is needed. The UN's response is that it is being hindered by the restrictions of the Israeli military and that the journey into Gaza can therefore take up to 20 hours, reports AP.
In an interview with Politico at the end of July, Israel's Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said that the country has opened up for more border crossings and that it has received more humanitarian aid than before through an agreement with the EU.
The problem is that the UN does not distribute (humanitarian aid), he said to Politico and added that more than 900 trucks are waiting.
They simply do not distribute it to the people in Gaza, he continued.
Israel has long claimed that there is no famine in Gaza and accused terrorist-stamped Hamas of stealing aid deliveries. However, Israel's military has not found any evidence that this has happened systematically, according to several high-ranking army sources who spoke to The New York Times at the end of July.
The war in Gaza broke out after Hamas' large-scale attack on October 7, 2023. Over 1,100 people were killed and around 250 were taken hostage. Since then, Israel's bombings have killed over 60,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the Hamas-controlled area's health department, whose figures are often cited by UN agencies and international organizations.
