The United Nations said Thursday it does not know how many aid consignments are currently in Gaza awaiting distribution, as it has not been authorized by Israel to be present at the crossing points.
The Israeli military denied on Wednesday that it was blocking humanitarian aid and claimed that 950 trucks were in Gaza waiting for international agencies to distribute their cargo.
"Despite our repeated requests, Israel has not authorized the UN to be present at the crossing points, which are militarized zones. We therefore cannot verify the quantity of supplies currently at the crossing," said Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Geneva, in a statement to AFP.
He also explained that the UN requires several authorizations: the first for the aid to cross the border—where the trucks drop off their cargo before returning to Israel—and another for UN trucks inside Gaza to collect the supplies.
“It is important to stress that this is not just about denied requests,” he added, “but also about obstructions on the ground.”
Israel must give the "green light to trucks without undue delay, allow teams to use multiple and safer routes, and instruct its troops to stay away from convoys and never fire on civilians along designated routes (or anywhere else)," Laerke emphasized.
"Missions obstructed"
The OCHA spokesperson stressed that Israel, “as the occupying power and a party to the conflict, must facilitate humanitarian operations until they reach the people who need them to survive.”
“If all the necessary conditions are not in place, there can be no safe and principled large-scale delivery. So even when missions are approved, they are often obstructed on the ground,” he lamented.
Israel is facing growing international pressure over the humanitarian disaster in Gaza, where some 2.4 million Palestinians have been under siege since the start of the war.
A total blockade imposed by Israel in March and only partially eased at the end of May has led to severe shortages of food, medicine, and fuel. Several senior UN agency officials have warned that people are “dying of hunger.”
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), backed by the United States and Israel, began distributing food boxes at the end of May and said on Wednesday it had offered the UN and other international organizations to “freely deliver all of their current aid.”
The UN and major aid organizations have refused to work with the foundation, saying it violates fundamental humanitarian principles. The UN also accused the Israeli military on Tuesday of killing more than a thousand people since the end of May who were trying to access humanitarian aid—most of them near GHF distribution centers.
AFP
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