Aid uptick ‘not enough to even scratch the surface’: OCHA
Olga Cherevko, a staff member at the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Gaza, says that while Israel is now letting slightly more aid into the enclave, its vast bureaucratic restrictions on aid flow have continued to make it impossible to reverse widespread malnutrition.
“The slight increase in what is coming in is not nearly enough to even scratch the surface to meet the people’s needs here on the ground,” Cherevko told Al Jazeera from Deir el-Balah, in central Gaza.
She described Palestinians as continuing to suffer “depths of despair, depths of malnutrition and starvation”.
A major reason more aid trucks aren’t entering Gaza, she said, is that the UN must coordinate every step of the delivery process with Israel, which often extensively delays approvals and clearances.
“There are so many factors on the ground that point to the fact that, despite the slight relaxation of [Israel’s] various constraints [on aid entry], we’re still in the same situation,” Cherevko said.
“People are continuing to starve, malnutrition rates continue to go up, people are risking their lives to get food, and there’s no change substantially and operationally, really.”
UNRWA says aid trucks far more efficient than airdrops
UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini has criticised the shift to humanitarian airdrops, which he says are 100 times more costly than trucks while carrying just half the assistance.
“If there is political will to allow airdrops – which are highly costly, insufficient & inefficient, there should be similar political will to open the road crossings,” he said, adding that the UN has 6,000 trucks filled with aid waiting at Gaza’s border.
“As the people of Gaza are starving to death, the only way to respond to the famine is to flood Gaza with assistance,” Lazzarini wrote in a post on X. “No alternative to the UN coordinated response with UNRWA as the backbone had provided similar results.”
“Let’s go back to what works & let us do our job,” he said.
Airdrops are at least 100 times more costly than trucks
Trucks carry twice as much aid as planes.
If there is political will to allow airdrops - which are highly costly, insufficient & inefficient, there should be similar political will to open the road crossings.
As the…
— Philippe Lazzarini (@UNLazzarini) August 1, 2025
Witkoff says he spent over five hours in Gaza today
The US special envoy said he and ambassador Mike Huckabee spent their time “level setting the facts on the ground, assessing conditions” and meeting with the GHF and other agencies.
Witkoff said they aim to relay “a clear understanding of the humanitarian situation” in Gaza to US President Trump and to “help craft a plan to deliver food and medical aid to the people of Gaza”.
At @POTUS’s direction, @USAmbIsrael and I met yesterday with Israeli officials to discuss the humanitarian situation in Gaza. Today, we spent over five hours inside Gaza — level setting the facts on the ground, assessing conditions, and meeting with @GHFUpdates and other… pic.twitter.com/x0a8JaUSk8
— Special Envoy Steve Witkoff (@SEPeaceMissions) August 1, 2025
