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.

Palestinians are waiting for aid trucks to cross in central Gaza Strip on Sunday, May 19, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

Aid trucks entered Gaza from southern Israel on Sunday through a new agreement to bypass the Rafah crossing with Egypt after Israeli forces seized the Palestinian side of it earlier this month. But was unclear if humanitarian groups would be able to access the aid because of ongoing fighting in the area.

Egypt refuses to reopen its side of the Rafah crossing until control of the Gaza side is handed back to Palestinians. It agreed to temporarily divert traffic through Israel’s Kerem Shalom crossing, Gaza’s main cargo terminal, after a call between US President Joe Biden and Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi.

But that crossing has been largely inaccessible because of fighting linked to Israel’s offensive in the nearby city of Rafah. Israel says it has allowed hundreds of trucks to enter, but United Nations agencies say it is usually too dangerous to retrieve the aid on the other side.

The war between Israel and Hamas, now in its eighth month, has killed over 35,800 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and fighters in its count. Around 80 per cent of the population’s 2.3 million people have fled their homes, severe hunger is widespread and UN officials say parts of the territory are experiencing famine.

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Hamas triggered the war with its October 7 attack into Israel, in which Palestinian militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and seized some 250 hostages. Hamas is still holding some 100 hostages and the remains of around 30 others after most of the rest were released during a cease-fire last year.

Egypt’s state-run Al-Qahera TV aired footage of what it said were trucks entering Gaza through Kerem Shalom. Khaled Zayed, head of the Egyptian Red Crescent in the Sinai Peninsula, which handles the delivery of aid from the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing, told The Associated Press that 200 aid trucks and four fuel trucks are scheduled to be sent to Kerem Shalom on Sunday.

It was not immediately clear if the U.N. was able to retrieve the aid from the Gaza side.

Southern Gaza has been largely cut off from aid since Israel launched what it says is a limited incursion into Rafah on May 6. Since then, over 1 million Palestinians have fled the city, with most having already been displaced from other parts of the besieged territory.

Northern Gaza, which has been largely isolated by Israeli troops for months and where the UN’s World Food Program says famine is already underway, is still receiving aid through two land routes that Israel opened in the face of worldwide outrage after Israeli strikes killed seven aid workers in April.

A few dozen trucks have also been entering Gaza daily through a US-built floating pier, but its capacity remains far below the 150 trucks a day that officials had hoped for. Aid groups say the territory needs a total of 600 trucks a day to meet colossal humanitarian needs.

Stormy weather sent a strip of docking and a small US military vessel ashore near the southern Israeli city of Ashdod on Saturday. The US Central Command said four of its vessels were affected by rough seas with two of them anchoring near the pier off the Gaza coast and another two in Israel.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel must take over Rafah in order to eliminate Hamas’ last remaining battalions and achieve its goal of “total victory” over the militants, who have recently regrouped in other parts of Gaza where the military had already operated.

Netanyahu faces growing pressure from the Israeli public to make a deal with Hamas to free the remaining hostages, something Hamas has refused to do without guarantees for an end to the war and the full withdrawal of Israeli troops. Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders have ruled that out.

Scuffles broke out between Israeli police and protesters in Tel Aviv on Saturday after thousands gathered to demonstrate against the government and demand the return of the hostages. The protesters called for Netanyahu’s resignation and demanded new elections.

International pressure is also growing, as the war leaves Israel increasingly isolated on the world stage.

Last week, three European countries announced they would recognize a Palestinian state, and the chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court requested arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, along with three Hamas leaders.

On Friday, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to end its military offensive in Rafah. The top United Nations court also said Israel must give war crimes investigators access to Gaza.

Israel is unlikely to comply with the orders, and has sharply condemned the ICC’s move toward arrest warrants for its leaders. Israel says it makes every effort to avoid harming civilians and blames their deaths on Hamas because the militants operate in dense, residential areas.