Israel reconsiders taking full control over Gaza aid delivery: Report
As pressure mounts to get more aid into Gaza, Israel appears to be changing tack and may let aid groups operating in the battered enclave remain in charge of non-food assistance while leaving food distribution to a newly established US-backed group, according to a letter obtained by The Associated Press.
The development indicates Israel may be walking back from its plans to tightly control all aid to Gaza and prevent aid agencies long established in the territory from delivering it in the same way they have done in the past.
Israel has blocked food, fuel, medicine and all other supplies from entering Gaza for nearly three months, worsening a humanitarian crisis for 2.3 million Palestinians there. Experts have warned of a high risk of famine and international criticism and outrage over Israel’s offensive has escalated.
That's not any improvement, still doubling down on using food for ethnic cleansing. Plus so far Israel has only let a trickle of food in, nothing else. What non-food assistance is he talking about?
Israel’s limited aid policy fuelling more ‘chaos and desperation’ in Gaza, NRC says
Israel’s policy to allow only an extremely limited amount of aid into Gaza is actually causing “chaos and a lot of desperation” that is exacerbating the hardship faced by people over a nearly three-month total blockade, Ahmed Bayram, Middle East spokesperson for the Norwegian Refugee Council, has told Al Jazeera.
“Israel’s drip-drip supply of aid is actually confusing people,” he said, speaking from Amman in Jordan.
“People are waiting for that loaf of bread which Israel has been keeping from them, only for Israel to open the gates and then close them again, allowing in a fraction of what is actually needed.
What we need now is not just that switch to keep flicking on and off, we need Israel to keep the gates open for hundreds, and thousands of trucks to arrive. The siege has been lifted in name only, the blockade has been lifted in name only – particularly in the north [of Gaza], which has received zero aid.”
Bayram said that one kilo of onions now reportedly costs about $50 in Gaza, and that many people are having to improvise by making bread out of lentils or dried ground beans or pasta, or using bug-infested flour, while others are eating leaves and grass to try to stave off starvation.
“I’ve heard from a colleague [in Gaza] saying that if you consume one meal a day now, you’re among the luckiest,” he said, adding that children are particularly vulnerable to dying from starvation or suffering severe physical and psychological damage from acute hunger and malnutrition.
“It’s a childhood taken away from them, and in a lot of cases, they’re dying a slow death, literally, while so much food waits across the border,” Bayram said.
Israel’s aid plan for Gaza ‘will not succeed’, UNRWA chief says
Israel’s aid delivery plan for Gaza is not only incompatible with basic humanitarian principles, it is unworkable, says the head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).
“It is not possible for a humanitarian organisation, which truly respects the basic humanitarian principles, to adhere to such a scheme,” Philippe Lazzarini said in a statement published on UNRWA’s official Facebook page.
“I do not think that such a model will succeed. This model seems also to be put in place in order to support more a military objective than a real humanitarian concern.”
