For one of the few times in recent months, humanitarian aid trickled on Monday into northern Gaza, where a convoy of trucks carrying food was greeted by masses of civilians desperate for food.
Thousands of Palestinian men, women and children rushed to the distribution point in the northwest part of Gaza City, where they received food aid in cardboard boxes from the U.N. World Food Program that they then lugged home through the rubble and sand of the war-ravaged territory.
“I just want to feed my children — they haven’t eaten in two days,” a thin man carrying an aid box said.
The food shipments went through inspections by Israeli authorities before being allowed to cross into Gaza, a process that has become increasingly contentious after Israel blocked humanitarian aid for more than two months.
Humanitarian groups have warned that the vast majority of the 2.2 million people who live in Gaza are at risk of starving unless the shipments, now at a trickle, are ramped up.
Israeli officials have expressed mistrust in the United Nations, suggesting that it has an anti-Israel bias. The country has also accused Hamas of diverting aid under a previous distribution system managed by the United Nations.
People hoisted the boxes on their shoulders and heads and stuffed supplies into their clothes or bags that they had brought with them. They scooped up items that had fallen onto the ground.
The procession of people, filing along the beachhead past makeshift tents and the ruins of buildings, kicked up clouds of dust.
The distribution centers have been fraught with chaos and danger for the territory’s civilian population. In the southern part of the territory, more than 70 Palestinians have been killed near aid distribution sites in the past two days, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which blamed Israeli forces for the violence.
In northern Gaza, some families were waiting at their doorsteps for their sons to return. One woman saw her son coming back with supplies, and she expressed her joy with a celebratory ululation.
Humanitarian groups say that the current level of aid represents a mere fraction of the shipments that they had been making during a temporary cease-fire that had lasted from January to March.
Neil Vigdor covers breaking news for The Times, with a focus on politics.
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