By Sophia Atalla
Children starving to death, meals of animal feed and grass, people killed while waiting for food aid—the stories coming from Gaza lately have been grim, to say the least. Of a population of 2.1 million, half are at risk of starvation, and every person is at risk of at least crisis-level food insecurity. Aid has barely been trickling in through the Rafah border crossing on the southern Gaza/Egypt border. In Northern Gaza, virtually no aid is being delivered.
Israel is using starvation as a weapon of war, according to the EU foreign policy chief.
So what’s being done about this? Hundreds of aid trucks wait to be let through at the Rafah border crossing. However, they continue to be blocked by Israeli restrictions, including arbitrary inspections and access denials. Some aid convoys are held for hours on end at checkpoints by Israeli forces, where they then are looted before reaching Northern Gaza. According to OCHA, there is currently enough food for everyone in Gaza for the next five to six months waiting outside its borders.
Nevertheless, Israel blames the UN for the lack of aid reaching Northern Gaza. As the occupying power, it is Israel’s responsibility to facilitate the distribution of humanitarian aid in Gaza. Still, the current screening processes and restrictions are causing the border crossings to operate far below capacity.
As a result, states and NGOs are exploring alternative routes for delivering aid, such as airdrops and shipments from Cyprus. However, experts have described these tactics as ineffective and mere diversions when powers could pressure Israel to improve the land routes. Ali al-Za’tari, a former UN humanitarian coordinator, says, “It doesn’t make sense… It seems that this is a way of saying, ‘We’re doing something.'”
In March, countries such as the US and Jordan began carrying out hundreds of air drops of aid into Gaza. However, experts have noted that one truck carries about ten times as much food as one airdrop. The airdrops are not exactly safe, either. On March 8th, one airdrop’s parachute malfunctioned, causing it to crash land, killing five Palestinians and injuring more. Also, at least twelve Palestinians drowned while trying to retrieve air drops that landed in the sea off the Northern Gazan coast on March 25th. Airdrops are generally meant to be a last resort and create chaotic and humiliating scenes on the ground for Palestinians, who are desperate and rush to get whatever they can.
President Joe Biden has also announced plans to build a ‘temporary pier’ off the coast of Gaza that would receive shipments of aid from Cyprus. There’s no telling how long that would take, but at the minimum, it would take many weeks to plan and execute. Again, experts have called this move a distraction, given the number of trucks ready and waiting to enter Gaza.
Aid workers and deliverers who have entered Gaza to distribute aid are not safe from Israeli aggression. So far, at least 196 aid workers have been killed, a staggering number in modern conflicts. Just recently, seven volunteers for the NGO World Central Kitchen were killed after an Israeli missiles struck their convoy in two separate attacks—after a day of delivering meals to starving Palestinians. The attacks are violations of international law and war crimes. Israel has taken responsibility for the killings, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called them ‘tragic’ but said that ‘it happens in war.’ Following the attack, WCK and other organizations have paused operations in Gaza, a brutal blow to a population already on the brink of starvation.
UNRWA, the UN agency that has been providing relief for Palestinians for decades, has also come under attack by Israel— and not just their convoys. Israel has accused members of UNRWA of working with Hamas and is actively working to dismantle the organization. Israel is also currently trying to build parallel aid systems that are reliant on private contractors— a system they would have more control over while ignoring the UN agencies and NGOs that already have a presence in Gaza. This is just one of many conflicting efforts creating further chaos in Gaza, where secure and ordered humanitarian systems are critical.
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