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Only 12 aid trucks have reached North Gaza since October, Oxfam says
The advocacy group says Israeli authorities gave permission for 34 aid trucks to enter the besieged North Gaza governorate in the past two and a half months, but only 12 were able to distribute food and water to trapped people in the area.
“Of the meagre 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,” Oxfam said in a statement on Sunday.
“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,” the group added.
Israel has been blockading and laying siege to North Gaza – which includes Beit Hanoon, Beit Lahiya and Jabalia – since October 5, trapping tens of thousands of people and cutting off their access to food, water and medicine.
Aid entry for entire Gaza (Though many don't make it to their destination in Gaza)
Out of the 500 daily trucks before Oct 7 or 15,000 a month.
Gaza situation ‘nothing short of an apocalyptic nightmare’
Bushra Khalidi, Oxfam policy lead in the occupied Palestinian territory, told Al Jazeera the figure demonstrates how the resources going in are just a drop in the ocean.
“This is not aid, this is cruelty. And when those supplies do get in, they are followed by shelling and destruction of the very places people are sheltering,” she said from Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank. “People are now scared to go out and get the aid on the trucks because there’s been follow-ups of air strikes after trucks were delivered.”
Khalidi described the situation in Gaza as “nothing short of an apocalyptic nightmare”. She said the Israeli military has created a vacuum in the enclave and an environment where looting and violence happen due to the desperation of the population.
Palestinians asking hungry children in Gaza not to play so they won’t feel dizzy
Khalidi said Israel, an occupying power, has obligations that include protecting and providing for the occupied Palestinian people. “It’s not enough for you to allow aid to be dropped at the gates of the Gaza prison and not make sure that the aid gets to the communities safely. It is Israel’s obligation to make sure that all the crossings are open and safe for passage,” she said.
“After 14 months of relentless bombardment and starvation of the entire population, some people are acting out of desperation and there’s absolute chaos in Gaza right now.”
Khalidi said families are rummaging through rubbish for scraps of food and boiling leaves in order to survive. She added that parents skip days of meals so that their children can eat, stressing that the entire Gaza Strip faces acute malnutrition and is on the brink of starvation, and that there are pockets of famine, especially in areas in the north.
“Some people are asking their kids not to play, because they will get dizzy since they’re not eating and drinking enough,” Khalidi said. “Imagine asking your five-year-old not to play while already there’s all this death and destruction around and quadcopters and drones are flying above.”
‘Do you know what freezing means?’
Without access to electricity or gas, displaced families living in makeshift camps in Gaza have to endure icy temperatures that could be life-threatening.
“We go inside our tents after sunset and don’t go out because it is very cold and it gets colder by midnight,” said Omar Shabet, a displaced Palestinian sheltering in a camp in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza. “My seven-year-old daughter almost cries at night because of how cold she is,” added Shabet, who, like many others, was forced to leave his home in Gaza City many months ago.
The UN says nearly a million people urgently need winter supplies, but getting aid into Gaza has proved nearly impossible as the Israeli military has blocked almost all humanitarian assistance from entering the Strip. As a result, 22,000 tents are stuck in Jordan and hundreds of thousands of blankets in Egypt. As night falls, people are too scared to light fires fearing it could make them a target for Israeli air raids.
“No proper clothes, no socks, nothing. We never expected to live such a life. My house was so good in the north,” said another displaced Palestinian, Reda Abu Zarada, struggling to hold back tears. “We wake up in the morning freezing – do you know what freezing means? We are shivering from the cold.”
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