UN complaints about critical supply situation
According to the UN, hundreds of thousands of people in the Gaza Strip are at risk of starving to death, with children being particularly affected. However, Israel argues that there is enough food available. Relief supplies are entering the Gaza Strip, with trucks seen at the Kerem Shalom border crossing that Israel opened a few days ago. Pictures from the news agency AP show one of the truck drivers, Mahmoud, from Egypt, saying, “I am Mahmoud, I come from Egypt and I bring flour for our Palestinian brothers, help.”
According to Israel, there is no food shortage
Israel’s embassy’s position is that the population in the Gaza Strip is being supplied. Journalists have been invited to observe, at least from the outside. Before the Gaza war, around 500 trucks were processed through the Israeli border crossing at Kerem Shalom in one day. Now, the number is significantly lower.
However, Moshe Tetro, the head of the Israeli administration for the Gaza Strip, is confident that enough food is entering the Gaza Strip, saying, “Regarding food, the supplies in Gaza are sufficient for the foreseeable future. There is no food shortage in Gaza. International organizations bring food into the Gaza Strip every day.”
United Nations contradicts
This statement contradicts what the United Nations reports. According to them, hundreds of thousands of people in the Gaza Strip are now at risk of starving to death. 90% of the population does not have adequate access to food. In 80% of households in the north and 50% in the south, families sometimes have nothing to eat for days, according to the United Nations.
About half of the population in the Gaza Strip are minors, and children are particularly suffering, according to Ricardo Pires, spokesperson for the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) to Sky News, “Gaza has turned into a children’s cemetery. Gaza is the most dangerous place in the world to be a child. So, the children are in acute danger. There are no safe zones for them, they have no water, no food, no medicine. It is a catastrophic situation for them.”
Difficult distribution of goods
The problem is not just the quantity of aid entering the Gaza Strip; it also needs to be distributed. Due to the ongoing fighting and the destruction of many UN facilities and the killing of UN staff, this can only be done in a few places.
As a result of malnutrition and the poor hygiene conditions in which many people live, infectious diseases are spreading rapidly, according to the World Health Organization. Only nine out of the original 36 hospitals in the Gaza Strip are still functioning, and even they are only partially operational.
Further areas to be evacuated
Meanwhile, the Israeli army has called on people in additional areas to evacuate. The central region of the Gaza Strip is affected, as well as Khan Younis in the south, where another 20% of the city is to be evacuated. A woman interviewed by AP represents many who no longer know where to go. “We have seen people, half of them wanted to go to Rafah, the other half to Khan Younis,” she says. “We wanted to go to the nearest possible place. There is no water supply like in Rafah. Everything is expensive; we cannot buy anything for our children.”
1.9 million people in the Gaza Strip have become internally displaced. According to the Israeli military leadership, the war will continue for a long time.