‘We can’t bear what’s happening’
Palestinians in Gaza say they are desperate and the amount of aid Israel has promised to let in is not enough.
“Even the amount of aid they are speaking about and we hear of is not enough for anyone. It’s not enough for even one group of people. People would fight over it, even if it comes, people would fight over it,” an elderly woman in Gaza City said.
“We can’t bear what’s happening. We’re fed up. We want to go back to our cities, our homes and our lives. We want life to be back to normal as it was before.”
A Palestinian man in Gaza City said Israel is trying to deceive the world by saying aid trucks are entering Gaza.
“This is not useful for the people inside,” he said. “The displaced people in these areas all need food and have malnutrition. When we take children to the hospitals, doctors always say that this person has malnutrition and that vitamins, food and water are needed.”
Video shows supplies for Gaza held up due to Israeli blockade
UNRWA spokesperson Louise Wateridge says the agency has enough food in one of its warehouses in Jordan to feed “200,000 people alone for an entire month”.
“It’s been sitting here for weeks on end, ready to enter the Gaza Strip,” Wateridge said in a video taken at the warehouse, just a few hours’ drive from Gaza.
“Just this morning, I received footage from my colleagues in Gaza. They have absolutely nothing left. And yet, here, just a few hours away, there’s everything,” she said, adding that the supplies include food and medicine.
“We need this aid to enter now. It has to go to people who are desperate,” she added.
“We need this aid to enter now.
It has to go to people who are desperate.”
In this video, our colleague @UNWateridge speaks from a @UNRWA warehouse in Amman, Jordan, where supplies have been held up due to the 11 week long siege.
This must stop. pic.twitter.com/8FHpjS0IAz
— Melissa Fleming 🇺🇳 (@MelissaFleming) May 21, 2025
Israel’s approval of minimal aid serving as ‘smokescreen’
The few aid trucks let into Gaza are nowhere near sufficient to meet Gaza’s vast needs and instead serve as a “a smokescreen” for Israel to “pretend the siege is over”, according to medical charity Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF.
“The Israeli authorities’ decision to allow a ridiculously inadequate amount of aid into Gaza after months of an air-tight siege signals their intention to avoid the accusation of starving people in Gaza, while in fact keeping them barely surviving,” said Pascale Coissard, MSF’s emergency coordinator in Khan Younis.
As we’ve been reporting, Israel has approved the entry of 100 aid trucks to cross into the enclave, but the UN says no aid has actually been distributed there yet due to Israeli restrictions.
Aid trucks still held up at border
The Israeli army, after three months of devastating blockade, has allowed 100 humanitarian aid trucks into Gaza.
But what we mean here by allowed is that the trucks have received military clearance to access the Palestinian side. They have not made their journey into the enclave. They are still stuck at the border crossing. Only five trucks have made it in.
This could be another sign of the systematic obstruction of aid in Gaza. Many critics say Israel is delaying the entry of aid trucks until the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation – an Israel-backed organisation to distribute aid – will start operating in Gaza, expected at the end of this month. Others say the Israeli government is profoundly divided over aid distribution.
Two killed in Nuseirat, today's death toll reaches 42
An Israeli attack has killed at least two people in central Gaza’s Nuseirat camp, report our colleagues on the ground. The casualties bring the total number of people killed in the enclave today to 42.
