Palestinians wait for aid deliveries in Gaza City, Sunday.Credit: AFP

The first aid ship to Gaza left the Cypriot port of Larnaca last Tuesday, sailing for over three days before docking around a kilometer (0.6 miles) off the Gaza coast on Friday. There, its cargo was brought ashore and loaded onto trucks. Jose Andres, founder of the charity World Central Kitchen, which organized the shipment, said it was only a test run and that the charity could bring in thousands of tons of aid each week.

The headlines generated by the shipment last week overshadowed UN reports on the spread of starvation and malnutrition in Gaza, especially in its north and among children. On Friday, the very day the aid ship arrived, the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund said about a third of infants under 2 in northern Gaza were severely malnourished because of the war, Israeli siege, the depletion of food reserves, and the widespread destruction of crops and factories.

In Rafah, where more food arrives, relative to northern Gaza, the proportion of malnourished children had risen from 5 percent to 10 percent by the end of February.

The figure represents a sharp rise from the rate in January, 15.6 percent. A survey in February using a sample of children in shelters and clinics in northern Gaza found that 4.5 percent of them had severe wasting, while treatment to prevent complications was unavailable. In Khan Yunis, 28 percent of children under the age of 2 were found to suffer from malnutrition, with 10 percent having severe wasting.

In Rafah, where more food arrives, relative to northern Gaza, the proportion of malnourished children had risen from 5 percent to 10 percent by the end of February, while those with severe wasting increased from 1 percent to 4 percent. The organization said last Friday that at least 23 children had died from malnutrition and dehydration in the previous few weeks.

Aid agencies with experience working in Gaza say that even if Andres’ promise is fulfilled and the U.S. completes the construction of a floating pier off the Gaza coast within two months, the maritime corridor can’t replace a land route and can’t meet 2 million people’s urgent need for supplies of food and water, in addition to essential items like mattresses, clothes, hygiene products, cleaning supplies, and spare parts for destroyed water infrastructure, especially in northern Gaza. The quickest way to aid is still on trucks on the ground.

The arrival of humanitarian aid in Gaza via a maritime corridor, Friday.Credit: IDF Spokesman’s Unit

International aid organizations, most prominently UN agencies with deep experience, emphasize that Gaza has to be flooded with supplies without delay. Only then will it be possible, they say, to combat organized looting of supply convoys by armed gangs (at least some of whom are connected to well-known crime families) and the sale of produce on the black market at astronomical prices – phenomena that develop wherever there is acute and persistent shortage of food.

In southern Gaza, the problem of gangs ambushing trucks has been brought under control, relatively speaking. Local officials and aid organizations have reached various understandings with families living near the Gaza-Israel-Egypt border that now maintain security on the route between the southernmost border crossing, Kerem Shalom, and Rafah, a few kilometers north. Local “popular committees” cooperate with officials from the Gaza Economy Ministry to identify merchants who price-gouge and confiscate their stock.

In northern Gaza, representatives of the powerful family clans have been working with security personnel (whether they are carrying firearms is unclear) to prevent gangs from stealing aid. Indeed, on Saturday and Sunday, with the help of these groups, at least 27 UN truckloads carrying food supplies successfully reached northern Gaza, including 15 that reportedly reached Jabalya for the first time in four months.

Members of ’popular committees’ patrol a street in Rafah, this month.Credit: Fatima Shbair/AP Photo

Aid groups say “flooding” the area with aid requires the reopening of all of Gaza’s border crossings. Officials in international aid organizations say Israel has been asked to allow aid to enter not just through the southern Rafah and Kerem Shalom crossings but also through the northern entrances to Gaza (the Erez, Nahal Oz, and Karni crossings).

Proposals have also been made to accelerate delivery by buying and delivering supplies from the West Bank rather than Egypt and Jordan. Bringing them from those two countries means transporting them over hundreds of kilometers, which also has a financial cost for drivers’ wages and fuel. The savings in transportation costs would allow donor countries to increase the volume of supply.

Making the purchases in the West Bank and hiring Palestinian drivers to transport the supplies would also slightly ease economic hardship in the West Bank. However, Haaretz has been told that Israel opposes these proposals as part of its year-long policy of isolating Gaza and separating it from the West Bank.

Public relations

The Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, the Israeli government agency that oversees the entrance of aid, gives daily reports on the humanitarian aid Israel allows into Gaza. In Monday’s report, it said 150 aid trucks had entered northern Gaza in the previous three weeks, most of them funded by Palestinian private businessmen.

Aid organizations say that the Gaza Strip needs at least 500 trucks every day to prevent famine, while the actual daily average is less than 200 trucks. According to COGAT, “The volume of humanitarian aid is determined, among other factors, by the ability of humanitarian organizations within the Gaza Strip to absorb the aid.” The aid organizations see this as unfairly pinning the blame on them.

“The speed at which this catastrophic child malnutrition crisis in Gaza has unfolded is shocking, especially when desperately needed assistance has been at the ready just a few miles away,” Catherine Russell, UNICEF’s executive director, said last week.

Gazans in line for food in Rafah, last week.Credit: Fatima Shbair/AP Photo

“We have repeatedly attempted to deliver additional aid and we have repeatedly called for the access challenges we have faced for months to be addressed. Instead, the situation for children is getting worse by each passing day. Our efforts in providing life-saving aid are being hampered by unnecessary restrictions, and those are costing children their lives.”

Aid organization sources who asked to remain anonymous list a few of the obstacles to delivering aid. Chief among these is shootings toward aid conveys. UN agencies have documented at least 16 such incidents, the most well-known of them being the incident of February 29, in which Gazan health authorities said dozens had been shot dead while waiting for an aid convoy, while Israel said the dead had been trampled or run over after soldiers fired at a few people who approached troops in a threatening manner.

In most of the other cases, the organizations say, it has been Israeli soldiers who opened fire. Drivers, Palestinian police whose colleagues were killed while protecting the convoys and therefore the organizations, have refused to travel toward northern Gaza as a result.

There are also more routine obstacles. The trucks have to wait for days before passing Israeli security checks at the Kerem Shalom or Nitzana border crossings. If a “dual use” item, meaning one deemed to have potential military use, is found on one of the trucks, all the cargo on it is blocked from entering Gaza. Each convoy of trucks requires constant coordination with Israeli forces, even in southern Gaza. When there’s no cell phone reception, as is often the case, the entire convoy is delayed.

Aid trucks and other vehicles belonging to aid organizations are delayed for several hours at checkpoints set up by the military south of Gaza City. “It isn’t as though there are other cars there. We’re the only ones there,” a senior official from one of the organizations says. Aid workers and drivers lose valuable time because of these long waits, he adds.

Trucks carrying humanitarian aid designated for Gaza at the Kerem Shalom border crossing, last week.Credit: Ohad Zwigenberg/AP Photo

Haaretz has been told that a request to allow trucks through the crossings at an early hour to reduce the number of people gathering around them was denied. A request to allow vital replacement parts to enter for the repair of water infrastructure in northern Gaza hasn’t been approved by Israel so far. A warehouse belonging to the Palestinian Water Authority (subordinate to the Palestinian Authority) containing replacement parts was bombed in an early stage of the war, preventing the water authority from making essential repairs, including to water treatment plants. “Dehydration and drinking contaminated water are components of malnutrition, which Israel also admits must be prevented,” the official says.

According to him, “Coordinating the entry of vital equipment for aid organizations is time-consuming and takes many weeks.” Such equipment includes armored vehicles to replace those that have been bombed, spare tires, which are crucial, and walkie-talkies. Authorities sometimes approve certain types of equipment, like the generators that hospitals rely on to function, only to block them at other times.

The plan for a maritime aid corridor (which followed airdrops that proved to be totally ineffective and, in some cases, lethal) and the great importance the Biden administration has attached to it have received extensive media coverage, bordering on a public relations campaign. It could create the mistaken impression that the problem has been solved, and that starvation and growing malnutrition among children can be resolved even as the war continues. But last Friday, UNICEF’s Russell said otherwise: “An immediate humanitarian cease-fire continues to provide the only chance to save children’s lives and end their suffering.”

Amira Hass