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UN life-saving aid allowed to trickle into Gaza as needs mount

Aid is trickling into Gaza after nearly three months of blockade, but it remains far from enough to meet the soaring humanitarian needs, UN Spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said on Tuesday.

He stressed that the assistance must be delivered swiftly and directly to those most in need.

He told journalists in New York that UN humanitarians were sending flour, medicines, nutrition supplies and other basic items through the Palestinian side of the Kerem Shalom crossing – a day after they managed to bring in baby formula and other nutrition supplies.

“The first trucks of vital baby food are now inside Gaza after 11 weeks of total blockade, and it is urgent that we get that assistance distributed. We need much, much more to cross,” he said, speaking from New York.

Complex aid operation
 In the face of mounting international objections over the total blockade imposed on 2 March – and condemnation over the risk of widespread famine – Israel started to allow a handful of aid trucks to enter Gaza on Monday, while simultaneously intensifying its military offensive.

The aid blockade has pushed the entire population, more than two million people, to the brink of famine, amid ongoing bombardment and recurrent displacement orders.

The UN humanitarian affairs office OCHA said Israel cleared nine aid trucks to cross the Kerem Shalom border on Monday, but only five were allowed in.

Mr. Dujarric said Israel requires supplies to be offloaded on the Palestinian side of Kerem Shalom. Items are then reloaded separately once the authorities secure humanitarian teams’ access from inside Gaza.

“Only then are we able to bring any supplies closer to where people in need are sheltering,” he said.

On Tuesday, one of the UN teams waited for several hours before being given the green light.

“So, just to make it clear, while more supplies have come into the Gaza Strip, we have not been able to secure the arrival of those supplies into our warehouses and delivery points,” he said.

UN humanitarians have received permission from Israel for “around 100” more aid trucks to cross into the Strip, but they said the scale of relief efforts allowed remains entirely insufficient.

Ready and waiting
“Not enough. Five trucks, nowhere near. Not enough,” said Louise Wateridge, a spokesperson for the UN Palestine refugee agency UNRWA, in reference to Monday’s trickle of aid.

She was speaking to journalists in Geneva from a warehouse full of ready-to-be-delivered supplies in Amman, Jordan, with enough food to feed 200,000 Palestinian civilians for an entire month. 

“Everything around me is aid that is supposed to be in the Gaza Strip right now,” she explained, as warehouses and distribution centres lay empty in Gaza. 

“Look at what the UN could do,” she continued. “We've done it: the ceasefire, the bombs stopped, the supplies went in. We reached every area of the Gaza Strip. We reached people who needed it most. We reached children. We reached the elderly. The supplies went everywhere.”

Scarcity fuels looting
As aid is scarce, desperation is on the rise in Gaza, with “several predictable effects,” according to OCHA Spokesperson Jens Laerke.

 “One is that the insufficient supplies are at greater risk of being looted,” he told journalists in Geneva.

He said looted products end up being sold at exorbitant prices on the black market, and opening access for large quantities of aid would automatically ease the situation.