Oxygen cylinders, generators, medical supplies and hundreds of water purifiers and solar-powered items. The list of essential goods to which the Israeli authorities have refused access to Gaza for security reasons since the start of their military offensive in the Gaza Strip is long. And it illustrates the severe restrictions and difficulties humanitarian agencies face in getting vital supplies to a population trapped in increasingly desperate conditions.
More than four months since the start of the Israeli ground invasion, aid continues to arrive in Gaza in quantities far below those needed. The main reason, as humanitarian agencies and NGOs, human rights organizations and officials who visited the border described to EL PAÍS, is that resupply operations continue to take place. come up against a very restricted, slow and confusing process imposed by Israel. This includes bureaucratic hurdles, limits at entry points, grueling inspections, arbitrary and inconsistent criteria for passage of items, and lack of guarantees and conditions for their distribution once inside the enclave. Palestinian.
“Humanitarian aid (is used) as a weapon of war: not only have the (Gaza) infrastructure necessary for life been destroyed, but the obstruction of aid is another element of this war by the army “Israeli,” says Spanish MEP Soraya Rodríguez, who visited the Egypt-Gaza border in December with other EU lawmakers to monitor humanitarian aid operations.
75% of Gaza’s population, some 1.7 million people, are displaced by attacks and successive relocation orders from the Israeli army. Most are overcrowded in Rafah, at the southern end of the Gaza Strip, on the border with Egypt, in the midst of a humanitarian crisis. There is a serious shortage of shelter, water, food and medicine. The risk of famine threatens. And critical infrastructure has been destroyed.
Despite the immense needs of its population, Israel allows aid to arrive in Gaza only through two border crossings: Rafah, which connects Egypt and is the main route, and Kerem Shalom, which connects Israel. Aid began flowing into Rafah in late October, after two weeks of a complete Israeli blockade. And in December, Israel partially reopened Kerem Shalom – Karem Abu Salem, in Arabic – after strong diplomatic pressure.
However, before entering Gaza, the cargo of humanitarian trucks must be inspected in Israel. This forces convoys entering through Rafah to have to detour around forty kilometers south, to a border post between Egypt and Israel which, with Kerem Shalom, is the only point where controls are carried out. Additionally, if Israeli authorities reject a single item, the truck will have to return to Egypt, drop off the entire load, repackage it and repeat the process, says Tamara Alrifai, a spokesperson for the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees. , UNRWA. Most of the time, drones fly over the area. “Every delay means we are delaying vital aid,” laments Ahmed Bayram, advisor to the Norwegian Refugee Council.
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Goods for civil and military use
Israel’s truck inspection policy precedes the current military offensive and targets items that define dual use, that is, civilian goods that could be used for military purposes. A spokesperson for the Israeli Defense Ministry unit responsible for coordinating civil affairs in the occupied Palestinian territories, COGAT, assures this newspaper that Israel is not limiting aid to Gaza which includes food, water, medicines, medical equipment and shelter supplies. It also says there has been no change in the dual-use goods policy, defined in a 2007 law, since the start of the military campaign. “We must ensure that all humanitarian aid convoys entering Gaza do so with humanitarian aid and not military aid,” explains Kobi Michael, former head of the Palestinian section of the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs.
Human rights groups stress, however, that Israel’s dual-use criteria are very broad and exceed international standards. And there is no detailed list of these so-called articles on which humanitarian agencies can rely, leaving a lot of room for arbitrariness, especially in crisis contexts like this. “There isn’t a lot of transparency, even less than before, so we don’t know exactly what Israel’s policy is at the moment,” notes Tania Hary, director of Gisha, an Israeli organization defending the right to freedom. travel in the occupied territories.
Among the blocked goods are water purifiers, medical supplies, solar-powered items and oxygen pumps, according to a December list from the Egyptian Red Crescent seen by EL PAÍS. Other media outlets pointed to sleeping bags, fire hoses, powdered drinks, flashlights, stretchers and urinals. “There are a lot of things,” says Alrifai of UNRWA, the main humanitarian actor in Gaza.
Another obstacle preventing increased aid delivery to Gaza is that Rafah is not a cargo crossing and is not accessible for a large-scale humanitarian operation. The Kerem Shalom crossing was the main entry route for aid and commercial goods before October. But Israeli authorities close it for half of Friday and Saturday, and two or three times a week they use it for other purposes, such as the return of prisoners and, on one occasion, the return of bodies, says Alrifai. The crossing has been blocked on several occasions by Israeli protests tolerated by the authorities. “Even though it is said that Kerem Shalom is officially open to humanitarian trucks, in reality we cannot use it every day and we continue to depend almost entirely on Rafah,” denounces Alrifai.
Since the reopening of Kerem Shalom, the daily average of humanitarian trucks entering Gaza, including via Rafah, has not exceeded 156 per week, and the maximum number crossing in seven days has been less than 1,100, according to the tally from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Before the military offensive in the Gaza Strip, an average of 500 trucks entered each working day.
No warranty inside
Slowing the process further, trucks entering Gaza via Rafah unload their cargo at the Palestinian terminal at the crossing point and the aid is loaded onto other trucks already inside the strip. From there begins the challenge of distributing humanitarian supplies within the enclave, whose critical infrastructure – including roads and communications – has been devastated, and where convoys cannot move freely, but rely on coordination and the approval of the Israeli army.
Since the start of the year through mid-February, Israeli authorities have fully or partially facilitated less than 20 percent of the 77 humanitarian missions in northern Gaza, supporting hospitals and water service facilities, hygiene and sanitation which are part of the missions. , according to OCHA. In the case of missions requiring coordination in the southern Gaza Strip, 58% were facilitated. OCHA also notes that Israel has not accepted any requests for the early opening of military checkpoints inside Gaza to speed up aid distribution. And he reported an increase in programmatic interference with convoys, sometimes forcing their cancellation.
The United Nations World Food Program (WFP) also suspended deliveries of vital food aid to northern Gaza on Monday due to the chaos and violence encountered by its latest convoys due to the breakdown of civil order in the Gaza Strip. Israeli forces also opened fire on UN humanitarian convoys and civilians gathered to receive supplies, according to human rights organizations.
Today, Israel’s plans to expand its ground invasion of Rafah threaten to wipe out even the limited humanitarian action that exists. Operations also risk collapsing if UNRWA has to cease its activities in Gaza due to lack of funds, after several Western donors cut their funding following the Israeli accusation – without any public evidence until present – according to which some 40 of the agency’s 13,000 employees in Gaza participated in the operation. attack on Israel in October.
International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan has warned that preventing the delivery of humanitarian aid could amount to a crime. And he stressed that Israel must ensure that Gazans receive food, water and medical supplies.
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