By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
SvennoJ on 02 May 2024
Edit Thread

Israel claims more than 400 aid trucks entered Gaza coinciding with Blinken visit

The Israeli military says it allowed 406 trucks carrying 8,040 tonnes of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip yesterday, when US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken was visiting.

It also said it has allowed in a total of 26,746 trucks since the start of the war on Gaza, which has killed more than 34,500 Palestinians so far, mostly women and children.

The Government Media Office in Gaza said on Wednesday that Israel allowed in an average of 163 aid trucks per day in April, which is below the 300 to 400 that Israel and the US have been touting, and much lower than the 1,000 daily trucks that it said starved Palestinians need right now.




The tracking site reports 253 humanitarian aid trucks entered Gaza yesterday. It's not tracking the new crossing yet though (40 Rafah, 213 Kerem Shalom) 31 aid trucks were reported to have entered the new crossing in the North of Gaza.

It's getting better (the low numbers for the last 2 days of April were missing the Kerem Shalom crossing)
Rolling 7 day average is now 192 (excluding whatever entered in the North, not tracked yet)

Still much more is needed.


Some in Gaza ‘tasting fresh bread for the first time in six months’

Shaza Moghraby, a spokesperson for the World Food Programme (WFP), says humanitarian access to Gaza is improving relative to where it has been, but it’s still not enough.

Yesterday, the first aid trucks entered Gaza via the Beit Hanoon (Erez) border crossing in the north for the first time since October 7.

“We have seen improvements but we need the routes to be opened all the time,” she said. According to Moghraby, WFP has been able to open four bakeries in northern Gaza where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are in dire need.

“So for the first time, people in the northern areas who were using extreme measures to make bread, using animal feed and bird seed to make bread, for the first time they are tasting fresh bread in six months.”



Can you imagine what that would taste like after 6 months. That right there is a huge boost of morale alone.





The sooner these go the better

‘We will do whatever necessary to win, including in Rafah’: Netanyahu

As Hamas says it is looking at the latest Israeli ceasefire proposals in mediated talks with a “positive spirit”, the Israeli prime minister is doubling down on his promise to launch a ground invasion of Rafah in southern Gaza regardless.

“We will do whatever is necessary to win and overcome our enemies, including in Rafah,” Benjamin Netanyahu’s office quotes him as saying in a memorial ceremony for soldiers.

“There were differences of opinion among us about operations in near and distant arenas. But at the end of the discussion, I made a decision and the decision was accepted.”

Smotrich congratulates Trump for retracting support for two-state solution: Report

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has congratulated former US President Donald Trump for “withdrawing his support for the establishment of a Palestinian state”, Israeli Channel 7 news website has reported.

Responding to the question of whether a two-state solution should be an outcome of the war, Trump said in an interview for Time magazine published this week: “There was a time when I thought two states could work. Now I think two states is going to be very, very tough. I think it’s going to be much tougher to get. I also think you have fewer people that liked the idea.”

Smotrich, head of the Religious Zionist Party, said he hopes other world leaders will show Trump’s courage, stop “turning their backs” on Israel and join the fight “against radical Islam that threatens the peace of the entire world”.

“A Palestinian state would be a terrorist state that would endanger the existence of Israel and the international pressure to establish it is an injustice on a historical scale by the Western countries,” Channel 7 quoted Smotrich as saying.