Aid system for Gaza – ‘seems it was designed not to work’
The American Friends Service Committee says the failure of the US-built pier to get food to starving Gaza people so far shows it’s more imperative than ever to reopen the three established land crossings.
“The pier itself can only bring in 90 trucks a day. We need 500 minimum, more like 1,500, to meet the vast humanitarian need that exists in Gaza,” said Kerri Kennedy from the organisation, which has worked in Gaza for 75 years.
“We are on the brink of a famine that is unprecedented in Gaza. There are 600,000 children on the edge of death. To think that we are playing around with building a pier… it is not [a] serious aid [effort].”
She told Al Jazeera the aid pier is a distraction from the much more effective land crossings that Israel continues to block. “They’ve been there for decades. They have the infrastructure, the security mechanisms. This is a system that is not working – and it seems it was designed not to work.”
Gaza border crossings ‘essentially’ closed, UN says operations ‘near collapse’ in territory
The UN says all of the major checkpoints where aid is supposed to come into Gaza, essentially, are not working.
The Rafah crossing, the UN says, remains closed.
The Karem Abu Salem [known as Kerem Shalom in Israel] crossing, while technically open, the UN says in practice is not really usable.
And the Erez crossing [Beit Hanoon], in the north, closed on May 9 and hasn’t been opened since. Another crossing called Erez west, in the north, only allows such little aid in that it is negligible.
A UN humanitarian worker in Gaza says their operations there are near collapse.
