A truck driver picks up humanitarian aid designated for Gaza, as reporters tour the Palestinian side of the Kerem Shalom crossing where aid is awaiting pickup, on December 19, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP
Just 12 trucks distributed food and water in northern Gaza in two-and-a-half months, aid group Oxfam said on Sunday (December 22, 2024), raising the alarm over the worsening humanitarian situation in the besieged territory.
“Of the meagre 34 trucks of food and water given permission to enter the North Gaza Governorate over the last 2.5 months, deliberate delays and systematic obstructions by the Israeli military meant that just twelve managed to distribute aid to starving Palestinian civilians,” Oxfam said in a statement, in a count that included deliveries through Saturday (December 21, 2024).
“For three of these, once the food and water had been delivered to the school where people were sheltering, it was then cleared and shelled within hours,” Oxfam added.
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Israel, which has tightly controlled aid entering the Hamas-ruled territory since the outbreak of the war, often blames what it says is the inability of relief organizations to handle and distribute large quantities of aid.
In a report focused on water, New York-based Human Rights Watch on Thursday (December 19, 2024) detailed what it called deliberate efforts by Israeli authorities “of a systematic nature” to deprive Gazans of water, which had “likely caused thousands of deaths… and will likely continue to cause deaths.”
They were the latest in a series of accusations levelled against Israel — and denied by the country — during its 14-month war against Palestinian Hamas militants.
The Gaza war was sparked by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel that claimed the lives of 1,208 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
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‘Access blocked’
Since then, Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 45,000 people in Gaza, a majority of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s Health Ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.
Oxfam said that it and other international aid groups have been “continually prevented from delivering life-saving aid” in northern Gaza since October 6 this year, when Israel intensified its bombardment of the territory.
“Thousands of people are estimated to still be cut off, but with humanitarian access blocked it’s impossible to know exact numbers,” Oxfam said.
“At the beginning of December, humanitarian organizations operating in Gaza were receiving calls from vulnerable people trapped in homes and shelters that had completely run out of food and water.”
Also Read | Human Rights Watch says Israel’s restriction of water supply in Gaza amounts to acts of genocide
Oxfam highlighted one instance of an aid delivery in November being disrupted by Israeli authorities.
“A convoy of 11 trucks last month was initially held up at the holding point by the Israeli military at Jabalia, where some food was taken by starving civilians,” it said.
“After the green light to proceed to the destination was received, the trucks were then stopped further on at a military checkpoint. Soldiers forced the drivers to offload the aid in a militarized zone, which desperate civilians had no access to.”
The UN General Assembly overwhelmingly approved a resolution on Thursday (December 19, 2024) asking the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to assess Israel’s obligations to assist Palestinians.
Published – December 23, 2024 07:33 am IST
