JUST TWELVE TRUCKS were able to distribute food and water in northern Gaza over the last two-and-a-half months, according to aid group Oxfam.
The charity said humanitarian access in the besieged territory is at an all time low, with aid deliveries being “blocked, deliberately hampered and targeted by Israel’s military”.
In a statement, Oxfam said: “Of the meager 34 trucks of food and water given permission to enter the North Gaza Governorate over the last 2.5 months, deliberate delays and systematic obstructions by the Israeli military meant that just twelve managed to distribute aid to starving Palestinian civilians.
For three of these, once the food and water had been delivered to the school where people were sheltering, it was then cleared and shelled within hours.
Israel’s occupation and control of all Palestinian territories – Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem – means it has tightly controlled aid entering the territory since the beginning of the current conflict last year.
It often blames what it says is the inability of relief organisations to handle and distribute large quantities of aid.
In a report focused on water last week, New York-based Human Rights Watch detailed what it called deliberate efforts by Israeli authorities “of a systematic nature” to deprive Gazans of water, which had “likely caused thousands of deaths… and will likely continue to cause deaths.”
They were the latest in a series of accusations leveled against Israel – and denied by the country – during its 14-month war against Hamas.
Oxfam said that it and other international aid groups have been “continually prevented from delivering life-saving aid” in northern Gaza since 6 October this year, when Israel intensified its bombardment of the territory.
“We have run out of words to describe the situation,” Oxfam Ireland CEO Jim Clarken said.
“But the facts we’re presenting today speak for themselves, detailing how aid deliveries continue to be blocked, deliberately hampered and targeted by Israel’s military.”
It said that thousands of people are estimated to still be cut off, “but with humanitarian access blocked it’s impossible to know exact numbers.
“At the beginning of December, humanitarian organisations operating in Gaza were receiving calls from vulnerable people trapped in homes and shelters that had completely run out of food and water.”
Oxfam highlighted one instance of an aid delivery in November being disrupted by Israeli authorities.
“A convoy of 11 trucks last month was initially held up at the holding point by the Israeli military at Jabalia, where some food was taken by starving civilians,” it said.
“After the green light to proceed to the destination was received, the trucks were then stopped further on at a military checkpoint. Soldiers forced the drivers to offload the aid in a militarized zone, which desperate civilians had no access to.”
Oxfam said that on 20 December, Israel permitted a further nine UN trucks to deliver food and water to an aid distribution point in Beit Hanoun, where civilians sheltering in schools were able to collect it.
“People said that they were barely surviving and had so little to eat, they were eating leaves,” the charity said.
It said winter weather conditions are expected to affect more than 1.6 million people living in makeshift shelters, including half a million in flood-prone areas.
“The UN reported that so far, only 23% of displaced people across the Gaza Strip have received support to help protect them from the rain and cold, leaving over 900,000 people at risk of exposure.”
The charity also described what people had told them about trying to survive in the besieged territory amidst “crippling hunger”, with one man who was forced to evacuate with his family from Al-Maghazi refugee camp in the centre of Gaza saying that they only had one packet of biscuits to eat for 15 grandchildren.
The UN General Assembly overwhelmingly approved a resolution on Thursday asking the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to assess Israel’s obligations to assist Palestinians.
The current conflict in Gaza was sparked by Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack on Israel that claimed the lives of 1,208 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Since then, Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 45,000 people in Gaza, a majority of them civilians, according to figures from the Palestinian health ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.
With reporting from © AFP 2024
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