US involved in talks with Israel, UN agencies on aid challenges
The United States has been involved in discussions with United Nations agencies and the Israeli government over the past few days to try and work through security challenges the UN is facing as it delivers humanitarian aid in Gaza.
State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters Washington is continuing to push to resolve their “legitimate concerns about the safety and security of their personnel”.
“There are some of the requests where Israel has legitimate security concerns, and what we’re trying to do is broker agreements that give the UN personnel the assurances they need, that they can operate securely while still protecting Israel’s legitimate security concerns,” Miller explained on Wednesday.
He also addressed the difficulties in distributing the aid within Gaza.
“I think everyone’s aware that has been the chief impediment to actually getting food to the Palestinian people. It’s not getting aid into the pier, it’s not getting into Kerem Shalom. It’s then making sure that it can be distributed from those points onward,” Miller said.
More than 495,000 people across the besieged Palestinian territory are facing “catastrophic food insecurity”, according to a report published on Monday by the United Nation’s hunger monitoring system, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification.
Stop supplying bombs. It's that simple to make it safer for aid distribution.
Looting adds to logistical woes of Gaza aid delivery by sea
A US aid official has said thousands of tonnes of food, medicines and other aid piled up on a Gaza beach are not reaching those in need because of a dire security situation on the ground.
Doug Stropes of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) explained Gaza continues to be an active combat zone with a “general sense of lawlessness”.
According to Stropes, truck drivers trying to deliver via a US-built pier are either getting shot at or having their cargo seized by “gang-like” groups.
The looting “appeared to have expanded beyond just self-distribution”, he said. “It expanded recently beyond just those in need stopping the vehicles and getting the assistance out, and it appears to be organised — not in the sense of a large-scale organisation, but there are organised elements that are stopping and taking the commodities from the trucks.”
Israel has closed almost all land border crossings and is not allowing aid to be distributed through them, as the UN and aid organisations are demanding. Israeli forces have also shot at people who have been guarding the aid trucks to prevent looting, at times killing them.
Attacks across Gaza ongoing
The past 24 hours have been quite violent, bloody, and quite brutal for Palestinians in Gaza.
There have been more attacks on densely populated areas, whether it is in the northern part of the Strip, the central area of Nuseirat or further to the southern parts of Gaza, where the Israeli military is still operating aggressively, destroying and systematically demolishing residential homes in Rafah city.
These attacks are taking place on a population that has been herded from one place to another, already displaced more than once. Many parts of Gaza are already struggling on a daily basis with forced dehydration and starvation.
It’s not only the unpredictable bombs that are killing people. Even if we say, for argument’s sake, the bomb stops falling, people are going to die because of the dire situation in Gaza.
Deaths, injuries reported in Israeli attack in northern Gaza
