Gaza still waiting for aid as pressure mounts on Israel

Ya Libnan

21-05-2025

Palestinians wait to receive food cooked by a charity kitchen, in Gaza City, May 21, 2025. REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa
By
Nidal Al-Mughrabi
and
James Mackenzie
No aid has reached people in Gaza, a U.N. aid official said on Wednesday, two days after the Israeli government said it had lifted an 11-week-old blockade that has brought the Palestinian enclave to the brink of famine.
The Israeli military said five aid trucks entered Gaza on Monday and 93 on Tuesday but supplies have not made it to Gaza's soup kitchens, bakeries, markets and hospitals, according to aid officials and local bakeries that were standing by to receive supplies of flour.
'None of this aid – that is a very limited number of trucks – has reached the Gaza population,' said Antoine Renard, country director of the World Food Programme (WFP), who said the trucks appeared to be stopped in Kerem Shalom, the sprawling logistics hub at the south-eastern corner of the Gaza Strip.
The Israeli blockade has left Gazans in an increasingly desperate
struggle for survival
, despite growing international and domestic pressure on Israel's government, which one opposition figure said risked turning the country into a 'pariah state'.
'There is no flour, no food, no water,' said Sabah Warsh Agha, a 67-year-old woman from the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya sheltering in a cluster of tents near to the beach in Gaza City. 'We used to get water from the pump, now the pump has stopped working. There is no diesel or gas.'
Abdel-Nasser Al-Ajramy, the head of the bakery owners' society, said at least 25 bakeries that were told they would receive flour from the WFP had seen nothing and there was no relief from the hunger for people waiting for food.
'I'm here since eight in the morning, just to get one plate for six people while it is not enough for one person,' said Mahmoud al-Haw, who waits in panicked crowds for up to six hours a day hoping for some lentil soup to keep his children alive.
Israel imposed the blockade in March, saying Hamas was seizing supplies meant for civilians – a charge the militants deny – and a new U.S.-backed system, using private contractors, is due to begin aid distribution in the near future.
As people waited, air strikes and tank fire killed at least 34 people across the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, Palestinian health authorities said. The Israeli military said air strikes hit 115 targets, which it said included rocket launchers, tunnels and unspecified military infrastructure.
The resumption of the assault on Gaza since March, following a two-month ceasefire, has drawn condemnation from countries that have long been cautious about expressing open criticism of Israel. Even the United States, the country's most important ally, has shown signs of
losing patience
with Netanyahu.
UK SUSPENDS TRADE TALKS WITH ISRAEL
Britain has
suspended
talks with Israel on a free trade deal, and the European Union said it will review a pact on political and economic ties over the '
catastrophic
situation' in Gaza. Britain, France and Canada have threatened
'concrete actions'
if Israel continues its offensive.
'PARIAH STATE'
Within Israel, left-wing opposition leader Yair Golan drew a furious response from the government and its supporters this week when he declared that 'A sane country doesn't kill babies as a hobby' and said Israel risked becoming a 'pariah state among the nations.'
Golan, a former deputy commander of the Israeli military who went single-handedly to rescue victims of the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct 7, 2023, leads an Israeli party .
But his words, and similar comments by former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in an interview with the BBC, underscored the deepening unease in Israel at the continuation of the war while 58 hostages remain in Gaza. Netanyahu dismissed the criticism.
'I heard Olmert and Yair Golan – and it's shocking,' he said in a videoed statement. 'While IDF soldiers are fighting Hamas, there are those who are strengthening the false propaganda against the State of Israel.'
Opinion polls show widespread support for a ceasefire that would include the return of all the hostages, with a survey from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem this week showing 70% in favour of a deal.
But hardliners in the cabinet, some of whom argue for the complete expulsion of all Palestinians from Gaza, have insisted on continuing the war until 'final victory', which would include disarming Hamas as well as the return of the hostages.
As some trucks left the Israeli side of Kerem Shalom, a small group of Israeli protestors angry that any supplies were being let into Gaza while hostages were still held there tried to block them.
Gaza children slowly dying
Palestinians wait to receive food cooked by a charity kitchen, in Gaza City, May 21, 2025. REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY
Father of four Mahmoud al-Haw and other Palestinians crowd around a soup kitchen in war-ravaged
Gaza
, surging forward and frantically waving pots.
Small children, squashed at the front, are in tears. One of them holds up a plastic basin hoping for some ladles of soup. Haw pushes forward in the scrum until he receives his share.
Haw does this every day because he fears his children are starving. He sets out through the ruins of Jabalia in northern Gaza in search of food, waiting in panicked crowds for up to six hours to get barely enough to feed his family.
Some days he gets lucky and can find lentil soup. Other days he returns empty-handed.
'I have a sick daughter. I can't provide her with anything. There is no bread, there is nothing,' said Haw, 39.
'I'm here since eight in the morning, just to get one plate for six people while it is not enough for one person.'
Israel has blocked the entry of medical, food and fuel supplies into Gaza since the start of March, prompting international experts to warn of
looming famine
in the besieged enclave that is home to 2.3 million Palestinians.
Some trucks were allowed to enter Gaza on Monday, after Israel agreed to allow limited humanitarian deliveries to resume following mounting international pressure. But by Tuesday night, the United Nations said
no aid
had been distributed.
Netanyahu, trailing in the opinion polls and facing trial at home on corruption charges which he denies as well as an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court has so far sided with the hardliners.
Israel launched its campaign in Gaza in response to the Hamas attack on Oct 7, which killed some 1,139 people by Israeli tallies and saw 251 hostages abducted into Gaza.
The campaign has killed more than 53,600 Palestinians, according to Gaza health authorities, and devastated the coastal strip, where aid groups say signs of severe malnutrition are widespread.
Reuters