Despite what Israel says are its efforts to bring more food and other aid into Gaza in recent days, the United Nations and other aid groups say it is falling catastrophically short of what is needed to stop fast-accelerating starvation there.
International experts warn that Gaza is fast plunging into famine, with the number of Palestinians dying from hunger-related causes shooting upward over the past month.
Gaza reached that point after Israel escalated its prior siege of the territory to block virtually all aid from March to May, aiming to pressure Hamas into releasing hostages still in Gaza. When Israel allowed aid back in, it did so mostly under a contentious new aid delivery system that resulted in the killings of hundreds of Palestinians and kept all but the strongest and luckiest from getting food.
Now Israel is pausing the fighting in some parts of Gaza each day to help aid convoys move, approving some imported food for sale in Gaza and allowing aid to be airdropped. But all of it is far too little, far too late, aid officials say. Nothing less than a cease-fire will allow the necessary avalanche of aid to flow safely into Gaza, they say.
Israeli leaders’ decision instead to greenlight the recapture of Gaza City throws the aid system into further doubt.
To have a real impact, aid agencies say Israel needs to allow in the hundreds of thousands of pallets of aid languishing outside Gaza — enough to cover around 100 soccer fields, they say — and help ensure that the aid can be distributed safely. Letting in small numbers of trucks and airdropping supplies is little more than a public relations stunt, aid officials contend.
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The post The Desperate Struggle to Squeeze Aid Into a Starving Gaza appeared first on New York Times.
