More aid is good news, but only a ceasefire will really make a difference in Gaza

ITV News

5 days ago

The aid that has gone into Gaza today is too little, too late and largely symbolic.
Whether delivered by land or from the air, those supplies are also an indication of global horror at what is unfolding.
The images of children dying from a lack of food in a region of plenty have caused enough outcry against Israel that, after 21 months of war and four months of an almost complete blockade of food and aid, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been forced into easing some of his government's draconian policies.
The World Health Organisation says Gaza saw 63 malnutrition-related deaths in July, including 24 children under five. Medics on the ground say those figures are likely to be much lower than the reality.
The humanitarian pause in attacks in parts of Gaza might also allow some of the 14,000 most seriously sick and injured Palestinians to leave the Strip for care elsewhere.
At the Specialty Hospital in Jordan they are preparing for an evacuation mission, readying their beds to receive some of the most seriously ill patients should they be able to get out. Over the past months, they have treated just over 100 patients; now the significant change in their conditions points to the desperate consequences of being starved of food and aid.
After the continued restrictions of food, aid and medical supplies by Israel, many of the patients are not just injured by bombs but dying because of a lack of food and medicine.
The head of the Specialty Hospital told me today he believes most of the children in Gaza are now malnourished.
As the Executive Chairman of the Gaza Health Initiative, Dr Fawzi Al-Hammouri, is also responsible for sending medical teams into Gaza. Even those doctors are so short of food they are losing significant amounts of weight in four-week missions.
'Since early March, there is almost complete blockade of the borders, so there is no humanitarian or medical aid getting into Gaza,' he told me.
'Now we notice that all the children that we receive, and their companions, have malnutrition. When we do blood tests we discover they have anaemia, low iron, low vitamin D, because even if they find something to eat, it's only flour or rice. There is no protein, so there is no meat, no chicken, no fish, no vegetables, no fruits. So this is why I believe that most of the children, now in Gaza, are malnourished.'
Jordan has sent 50 medical missions into Gaza since the start of the war, part of an international humanitarian response to the war and destruction of Gaza's healthcare system. Now, even their medical teams are struggling to feed themselves and their patients.
'We have noticed that even our doctors who go there and stay for two to four weeks, when they come back, most of them, if not all of them, lose between 5 and 10 kilograms,' Dr Fawzi said.
'They don't find something to eat, and now there is difficulty finding food for their patients inside the hospitals. If those patients have surgery and aren't fed well after they will not recover.'
Jordan's King Abdullah has agreed to take in 2000 of the most seriously ill children. For the medical teams who will receive them, there is now the challenge of also treating the effects of malnutrition.
Simply providing food is not enough in many cases. In many of the most acute cases, the organs have been so damaged that they will not repair.
Israel still controls what goes into Gaza and who comes out, and as such maintains the power to determine life and death.
They may be allowing more in and more out at the moment, but in reality, only a ceasefire has the power to really ease the humanitarian crisis within Gaza's borders.