Middle East Crisis: Deaths of Palestinians Desperate for Food Prompt Fresh Calls for Cease-Fire
Since the start of the war, few aid trucks carrying food have reached the Gaza Strip’s devastated north, setting off a widespread hunger crisis.
The crisis came to a head last week after the World Food Program, a United Nations agency, joined UNRWA, the U.N. agency that serves Palestinians in Gaza, in halting its aid shipments to the north, citing the overwhelming lawlessness that has taken hold in the area.
Scott Anderson, UNRWA’s deputy director for Gaza, said the chaos in the north has made it impossible for the agency to ensure its aid reaches the proper beneficiaries without causing harm to people in need.
“How in the world can you tell who got that flour? It’s simply not possible,” he said, referring to incidents in which hundreds swarmed trucks in the north. “What we don’t want is that only the people who are younger and stronger get food.”
UNRWA, short for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, Mr. Anderson said, was concerned that its aid could end up in the hands of militants or people looking to profit at the expense of their fellow residents.
The last time UNRWA tried to bring trucks to the north was Feb. 5, but one of them came under fire, according to the agency. The most recent delivery to reach the area was Jan. 23. Before that, only 93 trucks entered in January.
As humanitarian groups have warned in recent days that many Palestinians in the north were facing starvation, Israel has permitted airdrops of aid in the area and the entry of some trucks unaffiliated with the United Nations.
Israel’s bombing campaign and ground invasion has devastated the north, but it has also collapsed Hamas’s governing structure, unleashing anarchy. A small number of police officers from the Hamas-run security forces have shown up to work in Gaza City in recent weeks, but they have largely failed to restore law and order, residents said.
Footage posted on social media in recent months showed scores of Palestinians surrounding trucks along the beach in Gaza City, grabbing bags of flour and running with them back toward the residential parts of the city. The trucks usually come from the south, entering the north via the north-south coastal road.
Desperate Palestinians in northern Gaza have turned to raiding the pantries of people who fled and grinding animal feed for flour. While makeshift markets offer some food, prices have risen astronomically. A 25-kilogram bag of flour goes for $560, more than what many people in Gaza brought home as monthly income before the war, according to Mr. Anderson.
He said one solution to the current crisis was for Israel to allow trucks to enter northern Gaza from the border region in the north, instead of making them come from the south on the coastal road.
If trucks were brought into Gaza from a new entry point without tipping off the public, he said, it would be possible to deliver the aid to warehouses and distribute it widely. He added that delivering aid consistently thereafter would encourage the public to stop emptying trucks in the middle of the road.
“If we can get 100 trucks of flour in, that would be enough to flood the market,” he said.
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