No aid supplies left, staff starves in Gaza, Norwegian Refugee Council says
"Our last tent, our last food parcel, our last relief items have been distributed. There is nothing left," Jan Egeland, the secretary general of the council, told Reuters in an interview via video link from Oslo.
The council, which has 64 Palestinian and two international staff on the ground in Gaza, echoed comments on Tuesday by the head of the Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA who said its staff were fainting on the job from hunger and exhaustion.
The NRC said that for the last 145 days, it has not been able to get tents, water, sanitation supplies, food and education materials into Gaza, where Israel has been at war against Palestinian group Hamas since October 2023 and the United Nations has warned of a worsening hunger crisis.
"Hundreds of truckloads have been sitting in warehouses or in Egypt or elsewhere, and costing our Western European donors a lot of money, but they are blocked from coming in… That's why we are so angry. Because our job is to help," Egeland said.
"Israel is not yielding. They just want to paralyse our work," he added.
COGAT, the Israeli military aid coordination agency, said in a statement that Israel does not restrict aid trucks entering Gaza, but international organisations face challenges in collecting the trucks on the Gaza side of border crossings.
Israel is working with the groups to improve the system, COGAT said, adding that more than 4,500 aid trucks carrying food for the U.N. and international organizations have entered the enclave in the last two months.
Many truckloads were still waiting to be picked up. COGAT said 950 shipments were on the Gaza sides of "the Kerem Shalom Crossing in the southern side of the Strip, and the Zikim Crossing in the northern part, pending collection and distribution."
COGAT has accused Hamas of stealing food, which Hamas denies.
The NRC said its supplies of safe drinking water were running out due to dwindling fuel to run desalination plants. The water has reached 100,000 people in central and northern parts of Gaza in recent weeks
An Israeli official told Reuters that the U.N. has been given approval to bring in half a million liters of fuel.
"They're bringing in fuel and collecting, but they can bring in and they can collect more, and we are having discussions with them," the official said.
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The Independent
28 minutes ago
- The Independent
Inside the aid drops onto Gaza's torched ruins - with the starving too weak to fight for food
From the sky, the torched ruins of once-bustling cities simmer into view as the back of a Jordanian military plane yawns open. The ground beneath – Gaza – is ash and ruin: the bottom of a firepit stretching out to the horizon. It is as if giants have torn through anything that once lived here: monstrous teeth have ripped chunks out of the few buildings that still teeter above ground. Everything else appears stamped underfoot. In some corners, Israeli tank tracks have clawed up what is left of the soil in sickening scrawls. The only flicker of life is the families corralled into tents on scraps of beach in the punishing sunlight. From the ground looking up, these impossibly huge planes roar into view. It is absurd. Gaza is just 25 miles long and a few miles wide, and entirely accessible by land and sea. But because of Israel 's ongoing bombardment of the Strip and war with militant group Hamas, coupled with its crippling blockade, countries across the world are now dropping aid at enormous expense from the sky. Airdrops are always a last resort, a desperate measure. That is because it rarely gets to those who are most in need, UN officials have told The Independent – those dying of starvation are too weak to endure the hunger games to grab it. Sometimes it also lands in the sea. Sometimes it lands on the very people it is supposed to save. 'Like all the young men, Oday waited in the scorching sun for four hours. But when the planes arrived, he couldn't get out of the way in time,' said Moatasem Al-Quraan, 31, from central Gaza, about his cousin, nurse Oday Al-Quraan, who was crushed to death earlier on Monday. A pallet of aid being airdropped into central Gaza landed on him as he waited for food, his family and eyewitnesses told The Independent. 'He is married and has two children,' said Moatasem. 'He was like every citizen in Gaza. He has been hungry for four months. 'The plane which dropped the aid which killed Oday was carrying 12 boxes, inside each were 36 cartons of food. Where will we distribute them? The aid on the plane isn't enough for the 20,000 people who were waiting there.' Further north in Gaza, Muhammad Mansour, a 39-year-old father of six, said that when the aid drops, it is usually taken by armed gangs, as crippling hunger has exploded into lawlessness. A few times it falls in the sea. 'I don't know how to swim,' Muhammad said in desperation. 'Some went out in small fishing boats, but when they got it, the flour, sugar and rice were useless due to the seawater.' On Monday, the Jordan Armed Forces–Arab Army (JAF) conducted seven airdrop operations together with the UAE, Germany, France, Belgium and Canada - delivering 45 tonnes of humanitarian aid to Gaza as part of the Kingdom's ongoing efforts to support Palestinians in the enclave. In total, 289 airdrops have been conducted since Israel permitted them to restart two weeks ago, delivering 305 tonnes of aid. Meanwhile, officials in Jordan warned that they have had warehouses of aid for Gaza gathering dust since Israel reimposed a devastating blockade in March. Hussein Shebli, the head of the Jordan Hashemite Charity Organization (JHCO) that coordinates a lot of Jordan's aid response for Gaza, painted a damning picture of the nightmare of getting those supplies in by land. He said they face long distances, multiple checkpoints making transportation difficult, as well as frequent closures of the crossings into Gaza, and 'active prevention of aid entry by the occupying entity'. 'Deliberate inspection delays at checkpoints and crossings often hold shipments for extended periods, leading to spoilage and further disruption,' he said. Repeated attacks by Israeli settlers on aid convoys have caused serious delays and damage to shipments. The aid that does get to the crossing points can then be rejected on 'questionable grounds,' he added, referencing one load of dates which was turned back 'over the alleged presence of pits'. Israel continues to deny there are restrictions on aid or that there is even a hunger crisis in Gaza, despite the UN-backed global hunger monitor recently concluding that 'the worst-case scenario of famine' is playing out. Instead, the Israeli government blames Hamas for the suffering in Gaza and says it is taking steps for more aid to reach the population, including pausing fighting for part of the day in some areas, airdrops, and announcing protected routes for aid convoys. The main military unit coordinating aid – COGAT – has even blamed the UN for not picking up aid it has allowed in, although UN officials said they are faced with a slew of obstacles, including struggling to get permits to reach these pick up points. The Israeli military said on Monday that it will continue to work 'to improve the humanitarian response in the Gaza Strip… while refuting the false claims of deliberate starvation in Gaza'. But the reality is people are still dying of hunger: Gaza's health ministry said on Monday that five more people died of starvation or malnutrition over the past 24 hours. The new deaths raised the toll of those dying from hunger to 180, including 93 children, since the war began. Images are still pouring out of hospitals showing emaciated children, their bones pressing through paper-thin flesh. There are also deep concerns for the 20 remaining living Israeli hostages and captives still being held by Hamas, who during the 7 October bloody attacks on southern Israel seized over 250 hostages and killed over a 1000 more according to Israeli estimates. Late last week, the militant group released new galling videos of two emaciated Israeli hostages held in Gaza, which has horrified Israelis and added even more pressure on prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to reach a ceasefire with Hamas, even as his government considers another expansion of the nearly 22-month war. In one, a skeletal Evyatar David, who was taken from the Nova Music Festival, says he is digging his own grave and speaks of days without food. As global outrage over the rising famine in and bombardment of Gaza surges, UN agencies warn that the airdrops are insufficient and Israel must let in far more aid by land. Tamara al-Rifai, a spokesperson UN's Palestinian refugee agency, said airdrops are 100 times more expensive than their equivalent by land. Last year, the DC-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies estimated that one four-hour round trip by a C-130 military plane costs around $32,000 – while a trip by truck is estimated at around $970 from Cairo to Rafah in southern Gaza (when that route was still possible). Back in Gaza, local medics reported that at least 40 Palestinians were killed by Israeli gunfire and airstrikes on Gaza on Monday, including 10 seeking aid at aid distribution sites run by the controversial US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. The UN says more than 1,000 people have been killed trying to receive aid in the enclave in just a few months, most of them shot by Israeli forces operating nearby. The Israeli military has repeatedly denied targeting aid seekers and has said it has previously only fired in the vicinities of aid distribution centres. As the war rages on, the families in ravaged Gaza are dying to trying to find food. 'We thank all the countries that have helped and are trying to help, but the only solution is to open the crossing and distribute supplies,' said Moatasem as he attended the funeral of his cousin Oday. 'My cousin went to bring a meal to feed his family and children but returned to them dead.'
The Guardian
28 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Social media images of Gaza cafes can't hide truth: Israel is starving Palestinians
Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his supporters have variously argued that there is no starvation in Gaza, or that if there is hunger it is the fault of Hamas – who they accuse of stealing aid – or the United Nations. In a recent interview with the New Yorker, Amit Segal, the chief political correspondent for Israel's Channel 12, said he did not believe there was hunger in Gaza. Israel's consul general in New York said that there was 'no deliberate starvation in Gaza, only a deliberate disinformation campaign orchestrated by Hamas'. Social media has also helped spread misinformation about hunger in Gaza, with photographs and video of cafes being presented as evidence that there is no famine. One Israeli creator on YouTube with more than 400,000 subscribers posted a video entitled 'Summer 2025 (Genocide Never Tasted So Good)', which highlights the existence of several small cafes in Gaza City in an attempt to disprove the existence of food shortages. But Israeli government data clearly shows that it is starving Gaza. UN-backed food security experts said that Gaza is currently experiencing a 'worst-case scenario' famine. Even Netanyahu's biggest ally, Donald Trump, has said there is 'real starvation' in the territory. Despite such conclusions, pro-Israeli figures have continued to cast doubt on the veracity of images of malnourished children. In an interview with Piers Morgan, the US media personality Megyn Kelly dismissed such images as having been 'manipulated', before claiming that Hamas and 'frankly a lot of Palestinians' are 'masters of propaganda and they're fine having their own children starve just as long as they can put them on camera'. Such attitudes are reflected in the comments under the Gaza cafes video, where a typical post reads: 'It is hard to imagine that people can be so easily fooled into passionately believing the 'genocide' and 'famine' in Gaza when evidence against such false narratives is so readily available.' But while a small number of cafes are open in Gaza – including some of those in the video – they are operating in a severely limited capacity due to spiralling prices and scarcity of key ingredients, according to Salah Ahmad, the co-founder of HopeHub, an organization that created co-working spaces for remote workers and students in cafes across the territory. Basic ingredients are hard to obtain, and prices fluctuate wildly from day to day: a kilo of flour can cost $12 one day, and $40 the next. Consequently, the small array of snacks these cafes are able to still offer are usually extremely expensive, Ahmad said. 'When you see a small coffee shop or cafe selling drinks or cakes at high prices, it does not truly reflect the reality most people in Gaza are living,' Ahmad said. 'In many cases, it is just a small business. The owners are simply trying to survive and feed their families with a sense of dignity.' Of the five cafes in the video, one was not currently open because they ran out of supplies, one said it was reopening after being shut down for several weeks because there were no supplies, and another said it was no longer selling food, Ahmad said. Often, cafes in Gaza remain open even when they do not offer food, as they provide internet connections and electricity from solar panels, Ahmad said. HopeHub is still operating two co-working spaces out of cafes – one in Khan Younis and one in Deir al-Balah. Further confusion has been created by the fact that some of the cafes are posting pictures and videos from before they closed down on. Hamada Ice Cream shop, which has not been open for weeks, recently posted a highlight reel of the pastries, cakes and drinks the cafe once served. 'Me and 2 million Gazans are waiting for this moment Oh God, make things easy and these days pass safely, O Lord,' reads the video's Arabic caption. The few cafes that are open are obviously not able to serve Gaza's entire population, Ahmad said. 'Most people in Gaza right now are poor and trying to survive,' he said. Those who do go to the cafes 'might be employees who still receive salaries from international organizations, remote workers, or journalists', he said. 'They are holding on to hope, clinging to familiar routines, trying to stay connected to their memories of a more beautiful Gaza. For them, going out for a coffee is not about luxury. It is about staying human.'
Reuters
28 minutes ago
- Reuters
Israel's Netanyahu to convene cabinet on Gaza war goals
JERUSALEM, Aug 4 (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday he would convene his security cabinet this week to discuss how to instruct the military to meet his war goals in Gaza. "We must continue to stand together and fight together to achieve all our war objectives: the defeat of the enemy, the release of our hostages, and the assurance that Gaza will no longer pose a threat to Israel," Netanyahu said at the outset of a regular cabinet meeting. Israel's Channel 12 cited an official from his office as saying that Netanyahu was inclining towards expanding the offensive and seizing the entire Palestinian enclave. Israeli media reported that the cabinet would meet on Tuesday to make a decision on that. Netanyahu's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Gaza war began when Hamas killed 1,200 people and took 251 hostage in an attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, according to Israeli figures. Israel's offensive has since killed more than 60,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health officials. According to Israeli officials, 50 hostages now remain in Gaza, only 20 of whom are believed to be alive.
