Food arrives in Gaza after Israel pauses some fighting
With Gaza's population of more than two million facing famine and malnutrition, Israel bowed to international pressure at the weekend and announced a daily "tactical pause" in fighting in some areas.
"For the first time, I received about five kilos of flour, which I shared with my neighbour," said 37-year-old Jamil Safadi, who shelters with his wife, six children and a sick father in a tent near the Al-Quds hospital in Tel al-Hawa.
Safadi, who has been up before dawn for two weeks searching for food, said Monday was his first success. Other Gazans were less fortunate; some complained aid trucks had been stolen or that guards had fired at them near US-backed aid centres.
"I saw injured and dead people. People have no choice but to try daily to get flour. What entered from Egypt was very limited," said 33-year-old Amir al-Rash, still without food and living in a tent.
Israel imposed a blockade on Gaza on March 2 after talks to extend a six-week ceasefire broke down. Nothing was allowed into the territory until late May, when a trickle of aid resumed.
Now, the Israeli defence ministry's civil affairs agency says the UN and aid agencies had been able to pick up 120 truckloads of aid on Sunday and distribute it inside Gaza, with more on the way Monday.
- Basic supplies -
Jordan and the United Arab Emirates have begun air-dropping aid packages by parachute over Gaza, while Egypt has sent trucks through its Rafah border crossing to an Israeli post just inside Gaza.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, cautiously welcomed Israel's "humanitarian pauses" but warned Gaza needed at least 500 to 600 trucks of basic food, medicine and hygiene supplies daily.
"We hope that UNRWA will finally be allowed to bring in thousands of trucks loaded with food, medicine and hygiene supplies. They are currently in Jordan and Egypt waiting for the green light," the agency said.
"Opening all the crossings and flooding Gaza with assistance is the only way to avert further deepening of starvation among the people of Gaza."
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has strongly denied Israel was deliberately starving civilians as part of its intense 21-month-old war to crush the Palestinian group Hamas.
Military spokesmen say the UN and aid agencies should quickly make use of the lull in fighting and secure aid routes, urging them to pick up and distribute aid delivered to Gaza border crossings.
"An additional 180 trucks entered Gaza and are now awaiting collection and distribution, along with hundreds of others still queued for UN pickup," said COGAT, a defence ministry body that oversees Palestinian affairs.
"More consistent collection and distribution by UN agencies and international organisations equals more aid reaching those who need it most in Gaza."
UNRWA insisted it was ready to step up distribution, with 10,000 staff inside Gaza, waiting for deliveries.
"According to our latest data one in every five children is malnourished in Gaza City. More children have reportedly died of hunger; bringing the death toll of starving people to over 100," the statement said.
Over the weekend aid trucks began arriving from Egypt and Jordan and dropping their loads at distribution platforms just inside Gaza, ready to be picked up by agencies working inside the war-shattered territory.
But their number still falls far short of what is needed, aid agencies warn, calling for a permanent ceasefire, the reopening of more border crossings and a long-term large-scale humanitarian operation.
- Field hospital C-section -
Truce talks between Israel and Hamas -- mediated by Egypt, Qatar and the United States -- have stumbled, and Netanyahu remains determined to push on with the campaign to destroy Hamas and recover Israeli hostages held in Gaza.
Gaza's civil defence agency said 16 people were killed by Israeli fire Monday.
Agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said they included five people killed in an overnight strike on a residential building in the southern Gaza district of Al-Mawasi.
A pregnant woman was among the dead, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent, which said its teams saved the woman's foetus by performing a Caesarean section in a field hospital.
The violence in Gaza came against the backdrop of a UN conference in New York where France and Saudi Arabia will lead a diplomatic effort to revive the moribund push for a two-state peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians.
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Observer
4 hours ago
- Observer
Chaos, gangs, gunfire: Gaza aid fails to reach most needy
Paris: The trickle of food aid Israel allows to enter Gaza after nearly 22 months of war is seized by Palestinians risking their lives under fire, looted by gangs or diverted in chaotic circumstances rather than reaching those most in need, UN agencies, aid groups and analysts say. After images of malnourished children stoked an international outcry, aid has started to be delivered to the territory once more but on a scale deemed woefully insufficient by international organisations. Every day, AFP correspondents on the ground see desperate crowds rushing towards food convoys or the sites of aid drops by Arab and European air forces. On Thursday, in Al-Zawayda in central Gaza, emaciated Palestinians rushed to pallets parachuted from a plane, jostling and tearing packages from each other in a cloud of dust. "Hunger has driven people to turn on each other. People are fighting each other with knives," Amir Zaqot, who came seeking aid, told AFP. To avoid disturbances, World Food Programme (WFP) drivers have been instructed to stop before their intended destination and let people help themselves. But to no avail. "A truck wheel almost crushed my head, and I was injured retrieving the bag," sighed a man, carrying a bag of flour on his head, in the Zikim area, in the northern Gaza Strip. - 'Truly tragic' - Mohammad Abu Taha went at dawn to a distribution site near Rafah in the south to join the queue and reserve his spot. He said there were already "thousands waiting, all hungry, for a bag of flour or a little rice and lentils." "Suddenly, we heard gunshots..... There was no way to escape. People started running, pushing and shoving each other, children, women, the elderly," said the 42-year-old. "The scene was truly tragic: blood everywhere, wounded, dead." Nearly 1,400 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip while waiting for aid since May 27, the majority by the Israeli army, the United Nations said on Friday. The Israeli army denies any targeting, insisting it only fires "warning shots" when people approach too close to its positions. International organisations have for months condemned the restrictions imposed by the Israeli authorities on aid distribution in Gaza, including refusing to issue border crossing permits, slow customs clearance, limited access points, and imposing dangerous routes. On Tuesday, in Zikim, the Israeli army "changed loading plans for WFP, mixing cargo unexpectedly. The convoy was forced to leave early, without proper security," said a senior UN official who spoke on condition of anonymity. In the south of Gaza, at the Kerem Shalom border crossing, "there are two possible routes to reach our warehouses (in central Gaza)," said an NGO official, who also preferred to remain anonymous. "One is fairly safe, the other is regularly the scene of fighting and looting, and that's the one we're forced to take." - 'Darwinian experiment' - Some of the aid is looted by gangs -- who often directly attack warehouses -- and diverted to traders who resell it at exorbitant prices, according to several humanitarian sources and experts. "It becomes this sort of Darwinian social experiment of the survival of the fittest," said Muhammad Shehada, visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR). "People who are the most starved in the world and do not have the energy must run and chase after a truck and wait for hours and hours in the sun and try to muscle people and compete for a bag of flour," he said. Jean Guy Vataux, emergency coordinator for Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in Gaza, added: "We're in an ultra-capitalist system, where traders and corrupt gangs send kids to risk life and limb at distribution points or during looting. It's become a new profession." This food is then resold to "those who can still afford it" in the markets of Gaza City, where the price of a 25-kilogramme bag of flour can exceed $400, he added. - 'Never found proof' - Israel has repeatedly accused Hamas of looting aid supplied by the UN, which has been delivering the bulk of aid since the start of the war triggered by the militant group's October 2023 attack. The Israeli authorities have used this accusation to justify the total blockade they imposed on Gaza between March and May, and the subsequent establishment of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a private organisation supported by Israel and the United States which has become the main aid distributor, sidelining UN agencies. However, for more than two million inhabitants of Gaza the GHF has just four distribution points, which the UN describes as a "death trap". "Hamas... has been stealing aid from the Gaza population many times by shooting Palestinians," said the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday. But according to senior Israeli military officials quoted by the New York Times on July 26, Israel "never found proof" that the group had "systematically stolen aid" from the UN. Weakened by the war with Israel which has seen most of its senior leadership killed, Hamas today is made up of "basically decentralised autonomous cells" said Shehada. He said while Hamas militants still hunker down in each Gaza neighbourhood in tunnels or destroyed buildings, they are not visible on the ground "because Israel has been systematically going after them". Aid workers told AFP that during the ceasefire that preceded the March blockade, the Gaza police -- which includes many Hamas members -- helped secure humanitarian convoys, but that the current power vacuum was fostering insecurity and looting. "UN agencies and humanitarian organisations have repeatedly called on Israeli authorities to facilitate and protect aid convoys and storage sites in our warehouses across the Gaza Strip," said Bushra Khalidi, policy lead at Oxfam. "These calls have largely been ignored," she added. - 'All kinds of criminal activities' - The Israeli army is also accused of having equipped Palestinian criminal networks in its fight against Hamas and of allowing them to plunder aid. "The real theft of aid since the beginning of the war has been carried out by criminal gangs, under the watch of Israeli forces, and they were allowed to operate in proximity to the Kerem Shalom crossing point into Gaza," Jonathan Whittall, Palestinian territories chief of the UN humanitarian office (OCHA), told reporters in May. According to Israeli and Palestinian media reports, an armed group called the Popular Forces, made up of members of a Bedouin tribe led by Yasser Abu Shabab, is operating in the southern region under Israeli control. The ECFR describes Abu Shabab as leading a "criminal gang operating in the Rafah area that is widely accused of looting aid trucks". The Israeli authorities themselves acknowledged in June that they had armed Palestinian gangs opposed to Hamas, without directly naming the one led by Abu Shabab. Michael Milshtein, head of the Palestinian Studies Forum at the Moshe Dayan Center of Tel Aviv University, said many of the gang's members were implicated in "all kinds of criminal activities, drug smuggling, and things like that". "None of this can happen in Gaza without the approval, at least tacit, of the Israeli army," said a humanitarian worker in Gaza, asking not to be named.
Observer
6 days ago
- Observer
Food arrives in Gaza after Israel pauses some fighting
Gaza City, Palestinian Territories: Truckloads of food reached hungry Gazans on Monday after Israel promised to open secure aid routes, but humanitarian agencies warned vast amounts more were needed to stave off starvation. With Gaza's population of more than two million facing famine and malnutrition, Israel bowed to international pressure at the weekend and announced a daily "tactical pause" in fighting in some areas. "For the first time, I received about five kilos of flour, which I shared with my neighbour," said 37-year-old Jamil Safadi, who shelters with his wife, six children and a sick father in a tent near the Al-Quds hospital in Tel al-Hawa. Safadi, who has been up before dawn for two weeks searching for food, said Monday was his first success. Other Gazans were less fortunate; some complained aid trucks had been stolen or that guards had fired at them near US-backed aid centres. "I saw injured and dead people. People have no choice but to try daily to get flour. What entered from Egypt was very limited," said 33-year-old Amir al-Rash, still without food and living in a tent. Israel imposed a blockade on Gaza on March 2 after talks to extend a six-week ceasefire broke down. Nothing was allowed into the territory until late May, when a trickle of aid resumed. Now, the Israeli defence ministry's civil affairs agency says the UN and aid agencies had been able to pick up 120 truckloads of aid on Sunday and distribute it inside Gaza, with more on the way Monday. - Basic supplies - Jordan and the United Arab Emirates have begun air-dropping aid packages by parachute over Gaza, while Egypt has sent trucks through its Rafah border crossing to an Israeli post just inside Gaza. The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, cautiously welcomed Israel's "humanitarian pauses" but warned Gaza needed at least 500 to 600 trucks of basic food, medicine and hygiene supplies daily. "We hope that UNRWA will finally be allowed to bring in thousands of trucks loaded with food, medicine and hygiene supplies. They are currently in Jordan and Egypt waiting for the green light," the agency said. "Opening all the crossings and flooding Gaza with assistance is the only way to avert further deepening of starvation among the people of Gaza." Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has strongly denied Israel was deliberately starving civilians as part of its intense 21-month-old war to crush the Palestinian group Hamas. Military spokesmen say the UN and aid agencies should quickly make use of the lull in fighting and secure aid routes, urging them to pick up and distribute aid delivered to Gaza border crossings. "An additional 180 trucks entered Gaza and are now awaiting collection and distribution, along with hundreds of others still queued for UN pickup," said COGAT, a defence ministry body that oversees Palestinian affairs. "More consistent collection and distribution by UN agencies and international organisations equals more aid reaching those who need it most in Gaza." UNRWA insisted it was ready to step up distribution, with 10,000 staff inside Gaza, waiting for deliveries. "According to our latest data one in every five children is malnourished in Gaza City. More children have reportedly died of hunger; bringing the death toll of starving people to over 100," the statement said. Over the weekend aid trucks began arriving from Egypt and Jordan and dropping their loads at distribution platforms just inside Gaza, ready to be picked up by agencies working inside the war-shattered territory. But their number still falls far short of what is needed, aid agencies warn, calling for a permanent ceasefire, the reopening of more border crossings and a long-term large-scale humanitarian operation. - Field hospital C-section - Truce talks between Israel and Hamas -- mediated by Egypt, Qatar and the United States -- have stumbled, and Netanyahu remains determined to push on with the campaign to destroy Hamas and recover Israeli hostages held in Gaza. Gaza's civil defence agency said 16 people were killed by Israeli fire Monday. Agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said they included five people killed in an overnight strike on a residential building in the southern Gaza district of Al-Mawasi. A pregnant woman was among the dead, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent, which said its teams saved the woman's foetus by performing a Caesarean section in a field hospital. The violence in Gaza came against the backdrop of a UN conference in New York where France and Saudi Arabia will lead a diplomatic effort to revive the moribund push for a two-state peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians.
Muscat Daily
14-07-2025
- Muscat Daily
58,000 Gazans killed in continuing Israeli slaughter
How many more before the world wakes up? Palestinian Territories – Talks for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas have stalled even as the Palestinian death toll passed 58,000 in Gaza after 21 months of Israel's military onslaught, local health officials said. Delegations from Israel and the Palestinian group have now spent a week trying to agree on a temporary truce to halt 21 months of devastating fighting in the Gaza Strip. This comes as Gaza's Health Ministry said women and children make up more than half of the over 58,000 dead in the war. At least 47 people were killed across Gaza on Monday, including Palestinians gathered near an aid centre. Gaza's civil defence agency said Israeli air strikes on Sunday killed more than 40 Palestinians, including children at a water distribution point and at a busy market. Civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal said eight children were among the ten victims of a drone strike at the water point in the central Nuseirat refugee camp. At least 17 others were wounded. The Israeli military is yet to comment on the Gaza City market strike, but said its attack on Nuseirat was aimed at a Palestinian fighter and had veered off course due to technical failure. 700 killed while waiting to get water The Government Media Office in Gaza said attacks on people waiting in line for water have killed more than 700 Palestinians as part of a 'systematic thirst war'. The Israeli army has targeted 112 freshwater filling points and destroyed 720 water wells, putting them out of service. This has deprived more than 1.25mn people of access to clean water, the office said in a statement. 800 killed while trying to get food Philippe Lazzarini, Commissioner-General of United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), posted on his official X account that 800 starving people have been killed – 'shot at while trying to get little food in Gaza'. 'During the ceasefire, the UN provided at scale and dignified assistance. The trend of deepening starvation was reversed. Today, there are – at best – four very far distribution points in comparison to 400 when the UN was in charge.' He added that lifesaving supplies are expiring on at least 6,000 UNRWA trucks packed with food, medicines and other basics waiting for the green light to enter Gaza for the past four months. 'Allegations that aid was diverted to Hamas not raised in official meetings, never proven and never substantiated,' he informed. 'A functioning system was replaced with a deadly scam to force the displacement of people and deepen the collective punishment of Palestinians in Gaza. Take action to end the atrocities and put an end to the cycle of impunity.' 360 medical personnel arrested Gaza's Health Ministry reported that at least 360 medical personnel have been arrested by Israel inside the enclave since the start of the war and those detained are 'living in tragic and harsh conditions'. Among the detainees are doctors, further depriving thousands of wounded Palestinians of medical care, the ministry said in a statement. It called for urgent international intervention 'to criminalise the occupation's practices against imprisoned medical staff and to pressure for their release'. The Israeli army has killed at least 1,400 healthcare and medical workers across Gaza since the start of the war in October 2023, according to the ministry. Agencies
