2024-03-13 23:26:01
Israel will try to “flood” Gaza with humanitarian aid from several entry points as international pressure mounts to confront the growing hunger problem in the blockaded enclave, Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari said Wednesday.
More than five months following the outbreak of war in Gaza, aid agencies warn that the region’s population of 2.3 million people faces an increasing risk of famine unless food supplies increase significantly, and Israel is accused of not doing enough to ensure the arrival of adequate aid.
Israel says it does not impose restrictions on the amount of aid it allows into Gaza, and blames relief agencies for the delay, but it faces increasing demands even from its closest allies to do more.
“We are trying to flood the region with humanitarian aid,” Hagari told a group of foreign reporters.
Earlier Wednesday, the Israeli military announced that six trucks loaded with supplies from the World Food Program had entered the northern part of the Gaza Strip, where the hunger crisis is particularly acute, from a crossing in the security fence known as Crossing 96.
Hagari said convoys like this would enter later, in addition to shipments from other entry points, via airdrops and by sea.
He added, “We learn, improve, and introduce different changes so that we do not create a pattern, but rather diversity in the ways in which we can deliver aid.”
But Hagari acknowledged that getting supplies into the sector is only one part of the problem and that more needs to be done to solve the problem of how to distribute them fairly and effectively to those who need them most.
“The problem inside Gaza is the problem of distribution,” he said.
The challenges facing safe delivery and distribution of aid became clear earlier this month when thousands gathered around an aid convoy and were shot by Israeli forces, killing dozens.
Palestinian health authorities said that most of the dead were shot by the Israeli army, while Israel said that most of them died in a stampede or were run over by trucks amid a state of panic.
Israel inspects most of the aid that reaches Gaza at the Kerem Shalom crossing before entering it through the city of Rafah, south of the Strip.
As relief agencies struggle to distribute aid, calls from global powers, including the United States and the European Union, to open more crossings are increasing.
The United States has already dropped emergency food aid into Gaza via airdrop, and is working to open a sea corridor to the Strip.
An aid ship is currently approaching Gaza in an initial experiment to deliver shipments of supplies by sea, and it is expected that this will be followed by a US military effort to establish a naval pier on the Gaza coast that would be able to distribute up to two million meals per day.
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