Even amid Israel’s intensified military operations in Gaza, and the ever-evolving displacement of the enclave’s Palestinian residents, another Israel-Hamas war flash point has come to the fore this week: the entry and distribution of lifesaving aid.
On Tuesday, Israel began distributing food through a controversial U.S.-backed mechanism it is implementing unilaterally in southern Gaza, cutting out international aid organizations that have been working on the ground in the strip for years.
The United Nations has been largely sidelined in Gaza, watching as an observer, with its Gaza staff on standby and its warehouses on the other side of the border in Egypt full of aid, medicine, and fuel that Israel has declined to approve.
Why We Wrote This
The clash over Gaza relief, especially food for people nearing starvation, is increasingly heated. An Israel-backed distribution plan has left U.N. and other relief experts sidelined and harshly critical. Many Palestinians say the food is out of reach.
The Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) said Wednesday it has so far distributed about 14,550 food boxes, totaling 462,000 meals in new Israeli distribution hubs patrolled by U.S. security contractors.
As of Monday, since Israel eased an 11-week siege blocking aid last week, 294 trucks have trickled into Gaza, a fraction of the 500 trucks that experts say are needed daily.
Yet many Gaza residents say they are unable to reach to GHF centers, and U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) spokesperson Jens Lærke criticized the Israeli program Tuesday as “vastly insufficient” and “a distraction from what is actually needed.”
He called for “a reopening of all the crossings into Gaza, a secure environment within Gaza, and faster facilitation of permissions and final approvals of all the emergency supplies that we have just outside the border.”
Israel says this new distribution mechanism prevents the militant group Hamas from receiving and monopolizing aid.
Initial setbacks
But in its first days, the program has received setbacks. The GHF’s director resigned Sunday, shortly before it began operations, saying it was unable to fulfill the principles of “humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence.”
And on the GHF’s first day in action Tuesday, pandemonium erupted at one overcrowded distribution center. Thousands of Palestinians in Gaza breached a fence and forced the U.S. contractors to temporarily withdraw. The foundation said it resumed work later in the day and operated without incident Wednesday.
Reportedly, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians walked through Israeli military lines and checkpoints inside Gaza to reach the distribution centers.
“We have the supplies, plan, will, and networks to deliver massive amounts of lifesaving aid to civilians in Gaza,” OCHA Chief Tom Fletcher said in a statement late Tuesday. “Enough. Let us work. No more time to lose.”
The needs are urgent: One in 5 Palestinians in Gaza faces starvation, according to the U.N.-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification platform.
As part of its plans for a renewed large-scale invasion of Gaza, the Israeli army established four distribution centers, all located in the Rafah area in the southern part of the strip, where only a few hundred thousand of Gaza’s 2 million residents reside.
Yet many people are unable to reach the centers on foot, let alone carry 45-pound packages containing a week’s worth of supplies.
It creates a double crisis for Palestinians in Gaza: Hope and answers are just as scarce as food.
Like many Gaza residents, Mona Alghoula, who is seven months pregnant, worries about the Israeli distribution plan.
“I don’t want to go to Rafah. I can’t. It’s too far. And there is no transport. Do I go and die on the way?” Ms. Alghoula says from her makeshift tent in a displacement camp in Deir al-Balah.
In a nearby tent, Khitam Salameh agrees.
“They want to give us flour, but how can I carry it?” she asks. “I can’t walk to the distribution point. I cry from the pain.”
She pauses and gestures toward her legs.
“It’s not about the bread,” says Ms. Salameh. “It’s about the insult. To stand in line while snipers watch you … to beg for flour with a gun pointed at you or your child.”
It is a common fear rooted in family tragedy. In February Ms. Alghoula’s husband was killed by an Israeli sniper while receiving aid for the family.
Redistributing limited aid
With limited aid getting in, Gaza volunteers who have been working with U.N. agencies and their partners to distribute aid to their communities are doing what they can to make meager food stretch.
Khaled Othman, a community leader and volunteer, walks among families in a displaced camp with a half-filled bag of bread in his hand, rare food received from the World Food Programme using Israel-provided aid. He and others from the camp council are redistributing the little food they received.
“We took one or two loaves from each bag,” he explains, “to give something – anything – to those who got nothing. What else could we do?”
Mr. Othman, like other community leaders, is waiting for when, and if, international aid organizations and the U.N. return to Gaza.
Until then, “There are no real solutions,” he says. “Just effort. Sometimes it’s food, sometimes clothes, sometimes just keeping people from losing hope.”
Both Palestinians in Gaza and international aid organizations say Gaza residents need far more than the food packages the Israeli plan is providing, such as shelter, clean water, sanitation, and hygiene supplies.
Ms. Alghoula and her three children live with a friend, who is a mother of six, and her sister-in-law. Their tent, like many, is made of stitched plastic and warped wood, and offers little protection from the winter cold or the heat of Gaza’s summer.
“I wanted food, but I also wanted a new tent. I pray for anyone who could provide me with a tent,” she says.
Ms. Alghoula constantly worries about how she will take care of her fourth baby now that diapers and baby formula have disappeared from the market.
Bartering for “anything edible”
With store shelves long emptied and aid scarcely trickling in, some Gaza residents have turned to social media as a last resort – bartering over whatever they have left.
In one Facebook post, a resident offered a carton of instant coffee in exchange for a small bag of flour. In another, a woman posted a photo of a pack of laundry detergent, pleading to trade it for “anything edible.”
As hunger tightens its grip, Gaza’s fragile social fabric is beginning to unravel. Petty theft and black-market dealings are on the rise, and tensions simmer in overcrowded shelters.
In recent weeks, sporadic protests have broken out – not only against the relentless war, but also against Hamas authorities and negotiators as frustration mounts over the scarcity of food and the absence of a clear path forward.
At dawn, Ms. Salameh sits hunched outside her tattered tent, her hands working dough made from mashed pasta – boiled, beaten, and kneaded into a poor imitation of bread.
She paid $20 for the bag of pasta, one of the few items available for sale. Her 16-year-old daughter tends to a small fire. Rats scurry along the edges of their nylon walls.
This is breakfast.
“They’re just killing us slowly now,” Ms. Salameh says, glancing at her daughter.
There was a time, she remembers, when she had canned beans, pasta, even a few precious sachets of lentils. Now, she says, aid distribution is out of reach.
“I had been borrowing flour for some days,” says Ms. Salameh. She pauses. “But now I have nothing.”
