People run for cover following an Israeli strike that targeted a building in the Bureij camp for Palestinian refugees in the central Gaza Strip today. As Israel and Hamas trade blame for violating a ceasefire, humanitarian groups are trying to bring aid in. Photo / Eyad Baba, AFP
Urgently needed humanitarian relief has begun to reach the population in Gaza since the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas took effect a week ago.
Steep challenges remain, including restrictions Israeli authorities have placed on international aid groups.
Cooking gas entered Gaza last week for the first time in seven months, according to the United Nations.
Aid workers can move around Gaza more easily. Nutrition clinics and bakeries are reopening. Looting of supplies is less frequent.
In dealings with Israeli officials, “it’s clear things have changed. There’s a genuine collective effort to get these trucks moving,” United Nations humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher said last Tuesday.
Since then, Israeli officials have threatened to reduce the aid allowed in because of a dispute over the number of deceased Israeli hostages Hamas has turned over.
An Israeli security official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said today that Israel would halt humanitarian aid to Gaza “until further notice” after it accused Hamas of violating the ceasefire.
Shortly afterwards, aid officials familiar with the plans, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said relief deliveries would resume [tonight NZT] underscoring the precariousness of the agreement.
Under the terms of the deal, an average of 600 trucks of humanitarian aid are supposed to cross into Gaza daily.
Aid officials said it’s too early to tell whether that promised volume will materialise and last.
The two border crossings Israel has made available were closed for part of last week, due to the hostage releases and a Jewish holiday.
On the days the crossings were open, UN agencies reported that more of their trucks carrying food and other supplies were able to enter than before the ceasefire, along with increased shipments of fuel needed to run humanitarian operations and critical infrastructure.
“It’s a step in the right direction,” Abeer Etefa, a spokeswoman for the World Food Programme, said at the weekend of the more than 3000 tonnes of food aid the agency has brought into Gaza in the past week.
“It’s just one week into the ceasefire and the food remains insufficient to meet the scale of hunger. But it is a scale-up - we were not expecting it to happen overnight.”
Unicef, the UN children’s agency, has also brought in more tents, winter clothes for kids, hygiene kits and nappies, Tess Ingram, a spokeswoman said.
The Israeli military agency that oversees civilian affairs in the Palestinian territories has not released figures for the number of trucks that have entered Gaza so far during the ceasefire.
Egypt appears to have delivered most of the humanitarian aid since the deal took effect.
The Egyptian Red Crescent alone sent 400 trucks, mostly containing food items, on each of the three days the crossings were open last week, said Amal Emam, the chief executive.
That’s double the number the organisation had been able to send daily in the months leading up to the ceasefire.
The Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza, which was expected to reopen for medical evacuations and vetted travellers as early as October 14, is still shut.
Israeli authorities said the reopening will be announced “at a later stage”.
Even if the ceasefire holds, humanitarian workers in Gaza face an enormous task ahead: reversing a famine in parts of the Gaza Strip and providing supplies essential for the survival of nearly two million people who have been displaced, many of whom are hungry, ill or injured.
The halt in bombardment meant aid workers could move more freely through about half of the Gaza Strip, including to Gaza City, which was besieged and pummelled by Israeli forces in the weeks leading up to the ceasefire.
Like many groups, Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials as MSF, suspended its activities there in September as Israeli strikes closed in on its facilities.
In a video of some of the worst-hit neighbourhoods in Gaza City taken by the group’s emergency co-ordinator Jacob Granger, few buildings remained standing.
Pancaked homes and mounds of debris lined the roads, and the buzz of an Israeli surveillance drone was audible.
Still, aid workers said, displaced people were trying to return there, even to live among the rubble. More than 300,000 people have returned to northern Gaza since the ceasefire deal was announced, according to the UN.
Aid officials say they are beginning to scale up services in the north again. MSF and Unicef have resumed trucking in water, and Unicef is getting a desalination plant in Gaza City running again.
Unicef and the American charity MedGlobal have restarted clinics to screen and treat thousands of malnourished children.
Aid officials said that two crossings into northern Gaza - Erez and Zikim - must be opened to effectively reach people there.
Teams from the World Food Programme and the UN Mine Action Service successfully cleared roads inside Gaza leading to those crossings in recent days, Etefa said, but Israel has not announced whether, or when, those gates will open.
Hospitals throughout the enclave are in dire need of supplies, Gaza health officials said.
The World Health Organisation and MSF were able to bring some medical items into Gaza last week. MSF reported that two of its trucks were rejected by Israeli authorities - as were trucks from the Egyptian charity Mersal that contained medications and medical equipment and supplies, said Mersal’s chief executive, Heba Rashed.
The two groups said they were told the shipments included banned items. Israeli authorities did not respond to a request for comment.
Dozens of international organisations remain blocked from sending aid because Israel has not approved them under a new registration system that many aid agencies say breaches humanitarian principles and privacy laws.
Those include US-based organisations Care and Mercy Corps, officials from those groups said. Israeli officials have said the registration system is meant to prevent the alleged diversion of aid by Hamas.
The UN Relief and Works Agency, previously the backbone of Gaza’s humanitarian response and a key provider of health and education services in Gaza, hasn’t been allowed to bring supplies or staff into the enclave since Israel’s parliament passed legislation earlier this year that severely limits its work.
Once aid gets into Gaza, many obstacles remain, aid officials said.
Roads are littered with rubble and unexploded ordnance. Many warehouses sustained damage in the war, limiting storage capacity.
The crossings that are currently open lie behind Israeli military lines, requiring time-consuming co-ordination with the Army to access. Spare parts for trucks and generators for water and sanitation infrastructure are needed.
The drop in looting last week is a hopeful sign, UN officials said.
The World Food Programme - whose trucks have been a frequent target of looters - succeeded in getting 57 trucks carrying wheat flour and nutritional products from the border to warehouses inside Gaza without interference on Friday, Etefa said.
With 90% of Gaza’s population displaced, aid workers are also racing against the clock to bring sufficient shelter supplies into Gaza as winter approaches.
Iyad Shaer, 44, was displaced in late summer from Shejaiya in northern Gaza, an area that remains dangerous because of its proximity to Israeli troops. So he said he is staying with his wife and three children in a tent in central Gaza.
“We feel extremely cold at night, even though we wear heavy clothing and cover ourselves with several blankets,” he said.
“We are living in a state of total instability, constant fear of war returning, uncertainty about who will rule Gaza and questions about when reconstruction will begin.”
- Siham Shamalakh, Hazem Balousha, and Lior Soroka contributed to this report.
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