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New York Post
28-07-2025
- Politics
- New York Post
What to know about Israel's claim that UN has tons of food in Gaza that it won't distribute
Israel is blaming the UN for the lack of vital food deliveries to Gaza — as harrowing video captured hundreds of desperate Palestinians swarming aid trucks over the weekend. Israel officials are hitting back at claims that they have have delayed aid from coming into Gaza — sharing images of tons of aid piled up inside the Gaza Strip, which they said is just waiting to be delivered to hungry Palestinians. Col. Abdullah Halabi, from the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), told reporters last week that around 1,000 truckloads of aid remain undelivered 'due to a lack of cooperation from the international community and international organizations.' Advertisement But, a former US aid official called Israel's claims 'disingenuous — knowingly false.' The UN has for months accused Israel of refusing to coordinate with aid workers to get food and medicine to Gazans — making it too dangerous to widely distribute aid. 4 A war of words has broken out between the UN and Israel over aid deliveries to Gaza. Getty Images Former Israeli spokesman Eylon Levy ultimately accused the UN of 'unforgivable negligence' in its actions preventing food from reaching Gaza. Advertisement 'The failure of the UN aid mechanism in Gaza is truly catastrophic. 600 trucks' worth of food the IDF is urging the UN to pick up. I saw mountains of pasta, lentils, hummus, cooking oil, sugar, and flour,' he wrote on X, accompanying a video of him walking among aid supplies. 4 The UN warns all 2 million Gaza residents are at risk of starvation. REUTERS For its part, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said trucks traversing Gaza have to contend with traveling though an active war zone, along with hoards of desperate people rushing to get the supplies, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Advertisement Criminal gangs have also previously attempted to ransack the vehicles as they enter the Strip. 'Taken together, these factors have put people and humanitarian staff at grave risk and forced aid agencies on many occasions to pause the collection of cargo from crossings controlled by the Israeli authorities,' OCHA said in a statement last week. Grim video footage from Saturday, shot by a reporter on the ground, captured scores of people clamoring on top of two moving trucks in southern Gaza — just days after images of starving Palestinian children alarmed the world. As the trucks inched along, hundreds of people could be seen shoving each other as they tried to rush toward the vehicles, the clip shows. Advertisement The UN has also accused Israel of repeatedly rejecting requests to allow the trucks to enter Gaza, with Israel claiming it imposes no limits on the aid trucks seeking permission to enter. Since Israel lifted its aid blockade in late May, the US-funded non-profit the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) has started to deliver aid — overseen by armed Israel Defense Forces soldiers. 4 The UN has accused Israel of failing to create a safe path for aid. Getty Images The group has come under fire for its handling of food deliveries, with humanitarian aid groups refusing to work with the GHF over the armed distribution points. The UN's human rights office said that 1,000 Palestinians have been killed trying to reach the GHF food distribution sites in recent weeks. A group of Democratic senators have since called on President Trump to suspend American financial support for the GHF, expressing 'grave' concerns. 'We urge you to immediately cease all U.S. funding for GHF and resume support for the existing UN-led aid coordination mechanisms with enhanced oversight to ensure that humanitarian aid reaches civilians in need,' they wrote in a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio. 4 Palestinians walks away with sacks of flour after humanitarian aid was allowed to enter northern Gaza on Sunday. AFP via Getty Images Advertisement The UN has also blamed the IDF for damaging roads in and out of Gaza and failing to guarantee safety for aid workers in the territory. 'It is disingenuous — knowingly false — for any party to assert that it is failure, lack of courage, or deliberate conspiratorial withholding of aid by the UN or international organizations that is responsible for the humanitarian suffering in Gaza,' David Satterfield, a former US humanitarian envoy in Gaza, told the Times of Israel. The UN warned of 'catastrophic hunger' in Gaza as it said all 2 million residents are severely food insecure in a statement on Sunday following Israel's pledge to implement daily pauses in the fighting to allow aid through. 'This is progress, but vast amounts of aid are needed to stave off famine and a catastrophic health crisis,' Tom Fletcher from the OCHA said in a statement. Advertisement On Monday, Trump said there was 'real starvation' in Gaza. Just under 30 aid packages carrying food were airdropped over Gaza on Sunday, COGAT said in a statement. Israel has continued to blame Hamas for diverting aid from civilians throughout the war. Advertisement However, an internal US government analysis found no evidence of systematic theft of aid supplies by the group, according to the report presented to State Department officials, which the IDF branded 'biased.' The World Food Program said on Sunday it has enough food heading to the region to feed Gaza's entire population 'for almost three months,' but warned that a 'third of the population' is still 'not eating for days.'
Yahoo
25-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Israel gives tour of UN aid left ‘rotting' in Gaza
Credit: X/@cogatonline Israel has given a tour of a large storage site within Gaza containing what it claims to be 1,000 lorries-worth of aid that the United Nations (UN) has failed to deliver. The move on Thursday intensified a row with the international community, which has become increasingly critical of starvation levels in the Strip. Amid escalating warnings of famine, Israel has in recent days sought to blame the UN and major NGOs for not distributing available supplies, saying it has placed no restrictions on them doing so. It released well-produced drone footage showing what appeared to be aid packages across a multiple-hectare site within the perimeter wire. Credit: Reuters Israeli journalists were subsequently shown around the facility near the Kerem Shalom crossing, with one senior IDF officer criticising the 'famine narrative' he said was propagated by Hamas. Col Abdullah Halabi, of the defence ministry's Coordinator of Government Activity in the Territories unit, said: 'The State of Israel allows the entry of humanitarian aid beyond the standards of international law, without restriction. As long as the international community makes an effort to bring in the aid, we will allow them to bring it in.' Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel, reposted pictures of the footage on social media, saying: 'UN food is either looted by Hamas or rots in the sun.' But the UN has said that, in practice, Israel is not facilitating the distribution of its aid in Gaza. Stéphane Dujarric, the UN spokesman, said the country was imposing 'tremendous bureaucratic impediments' and 'tremendous security impediments'. He said: 'Frankly I think there is a lack of willingness to allow us to do our work.' This comes against a backdrop of severe denunciations of Israel's conduct in Gaza by the UK, France, Australia, Canada and others. On Thursday, Sir Keir Starmer condemned the 'unspeakable' and 'indefensible' suffering of Gazans, reiterating Labour's support for a Palestinian state, while France went further by promising to formally recognise such an entity in September. The full details of why the UN and its NGO partners are unable to deliver aid into Gaza are not clear. But it is believed that the organisation had to adapt its delivery routes and methods from its traditional patterns because of the deteriorating security and humanitarian situation, and that Israel is not facilitating this on the ground. On Thursday, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that the previous day, Israel had facilitated only eight of 16 requested movements of aid. The UN believes that around one quarter of the Strip's approximately two million residents are now facing famine. Israel imposed a blockade of aid deliveries at the beginning of March, claiming that Hamas routinely seizes supplies and uses them to finance its terror operations and maintain control over the civilian population. Since the end of May, a new system was opened using the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a US contractor which requires civilians to walk to a handful of large purpose-built distribution centres to collect aid. The system has been associated with repeated mass shootings, with the UN accusing Israel of killing more than 1,000 civilians near the sites. Israel has rejected the claims, admitting only to firing warning shots or shots 'near' Palestinians, and blaming Hamas for the chaos. Credit: X/@HowidyHamza Israeli army radio was reported citing a military official that Israel would allow foreign countries to parachute aid into Gaza starting on Friday. A parallel prong of aid – principally delivered by the UN – is technically in place, but because of the fragmentation of Gazan society, the body is no longer able to safely deliver food, water, medical supplies and fuel into population centres in the way it did before March. Trucks are routinely looted by desperate civilians or by armed gangs. The situation has fuelled a bitter war of claim and counter-claim between Israel and the UN, whose relations were already at an all-time low. Among the un-evidenced accusations levelled by anonymous Israeli government sources is that the UN has requested the Hamas-run 'blue police' to escort its trucks. On Friday, the row spilled over onto the BBC's Today Programme when David Mencer, a spokesman for Benjamin Netanyahu's office, accused Nick Robinson of telling lies. In a bad-tempered exchange, Mr Mencer described the UN programme as a 'billion-dollar racket' and said any food shortages were engineered by Hamas. He said Israel had offered to provide security to deliver the aid at the Kerem Shalom crossing, saying it would provide two weeks' worth of food for every person in Gaza. 'The UN is working in cooperation with Hamas to restrict the amount of aid to its own people,' he claimed. The spokesman did not give a reason for why the UN would deliberately restrict aid deliveries. Credit: BBC Today Programme The OCHA said, regarding Wednesday's aid efforts: 'The facilitation of humanitarian movements inside Gaza, out of 16 attempts to coordinate such movements yesterday, only eight were facilitated – including the collection and transfer of limited fuel. 'Two other movements were initially approved but then faced impediments on the ground, three were outright denied – including the retrieval of medical supplies – and the remaining three had to be cancelled by the organizers. 'OCHA and its partners emphasize that the aid that they have been able to bring into Gaza over the past two months is nowhere near sufficient to meet people's survival needs.' It comes as Medecins Sans Frontieres said the rate of malnutrition among young children and pregnant or breastfeeding women at its clinics in Gaza had tripled in the last two weeks, and now stood at 25 per cent. Reuters reported that an analysis by the US agency for international development, completed in June, found no evidence of systematic theft of aid by Hamas. The analysis examined 156 incidents of theft or loss of US-funded supplies reported by US aid partner organisations between October 2023 and May this year. USAID has now been largely shut down, thanks to Donald Trump's government spending cuts, and the leaked documents were heavily criticised by a state department spokesman. It came as footage emerged appearing to show ultra-nationalist Israelis blocking the road to prevent aid trucks from getting into Gaza. A spokesman for UNICEF, the UN humanitarian body for children, said Gaza was on the brink of running out of specialised therapeutic food needed to save the lives of severely malnourished children. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more. Solve the daily Crossword
The Hill
25-07-2025
- General
- The Hill
Israel will allow nations to drop food into Gaza
The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) will allow foreign countries to drop aid into the Gaza Strip, according to a report Friday on Israel Army Radio, citing an army source. The military will allow the United Arab Emirates and Jordan to resume air-dropping aid packages, as they did in 2024, according to the Jerusalem Post. On Wednesday, more than 100 aid groups warned that Gaza is on the brink of starvation, and UNWRA said that one in five children is malnourished. The U.N. announced on Tuesday that more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces while waiting in food lines. Israel, however, maintains that Hamas is putting a spotlight on hunger in Gaza amid ceasefire negotiations. The IDF posted on X on Friday, 'We operate every day to bring in aid, Hamas operates every day to create a perception of crisis. The international community needs to know the truth!' – COL Abdullah Halabi, Head of the CLA Gaza, on the Gazan side of the Kerem Shalom crossing.' According to the Jerusalem Post, the IDF has recognized that there is food insecurity in Gaza but not starvation. State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott at a briefing Thursday mirrored Israel's stance that Hamas is preventing aid from entering Gaza and said during a press briefing, 'The only group weaponizing aid is Hamas.' The Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories, an agency under the Israeli Ministry of Defense, also posted on X, 'Contrary to popular narratives, there is NO LIMIT on the number of humanitarian aid trucks that can enter Gaza. The real bottleneck lies with the UN and international organizations, whose collection of aid from the crossings dropped sharply over the past month.' The IDF and the State Department have not immediately responded to requests for comment. The World Central Kitchen resumed its operation at Deir al-Balah Field Kitchen in Gaza after it had to pause for five days due to a lack of ingredients. It was the second time they have had to pause since the beginning of the war, according to a press release. 'Our ability to continue cooking remains uncertain day-to-day,' the group wrote. On Thursday, the U.S. said it was leaving from ceasefire talks between Gaza and Israel and said they are exploring other options to find a peaceful solution. 'We have decided to bring our team home from Doha for consultations after the latest response from Hamas, which clearly shows a lack of desire to reach a ceasefire in Gaza,' Witkoff wrote in a post on the social media site X. Also Thursday, France announced that it will recognize Palestinian statehood in September, marking the first of the G7 countries to do this.
