As Israel's harsh assault on Gaza enters its eleventh month, a debate about the disruption of aid access to the Gaza Strip has surfaced in international discussions. The United Nations has expressed concern over Israel's systematic prevention of aid delivery to various areas in the Gaza Strip in light of the ongoing Israeli war and the strict restrictions imposed by Israel on aid entry, as well as the closure of border crossings.
In contrast, officials from the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) have presented a misleading narrative, attempting to avoid accountability for the obstruction of aid since the start of its genocide in the Gaza Strip on October 7. Claiming the absence of a famine and emphasizing the availability of substantial aid in the Gaza Strip.
Amid Israel’s denial of preventing food aid delivery to Gaza, a September 16 investigation by 15 humanitarian aid organizations declared that Israel has blocked 83 percent of food aid from entering Gaza, almost a year after the war in the Gaza Strip.
Israel Claims “Gaza's Food Supply Exceeds Population Needs”
On May 5, the Israeli military body that oversees aid distribution in Gaza, COGAT, released a statement on the X platform, claiming that food supplies in Gaza are more than sufficient for the population's needs.
"Noting the improved situation, international organizations stated last week that the volume of goods transported to northern Gaza must be reduced since the quantities are too high in relation to the population," wrote COGAT.
In July, COGAT claimed that there is no longer a humanitarian crisis in northern Gaza due to the practically unfettered access of humanitarian aid to the region in recent weeks and months.
In addition, the head of COGAT, Ghassan Alian, alleged that on average, 30 trucks of aid per day enter through two out of three crossings between Israel and northern Gaza, and that as a result, northern Gaza “is no longer part of the discussion” regarding humanitarian concerns in Gaza.
On September 18, COGAT alleged that it had facilitated over 1 million tons of aid, including food and medical supplies, since the war began in coordination with international agencies and denied that the Israeli siege prevented aid from entering Gaza.
Moreover, COGAT alleged that Israel places no limit on the amount of aid that can enter Gaza and claimed that most requested humanitarian goods, including food and medicine, are allowed entry, with less than 1% of the trucks denied entry for serious security reasons.
In parallel, Israeli academics and public health officials authored a working paper on the amount of food entering the Gaza Strip during the war and claimed that the supply is sufficient for the population’s daily energy and protein needs.
In contrast, Israeli officials have clearly expressed their intentions to obstruct humanitarian aid through their statements since the beginning of the war. In May, Israel’s Minister of Heritage, Amichai Eliyahu, remarked on Channel 14 that “the absurdity is that because we need the US support, or [rather] are asking for the US support, we are allowing Hamas to continue to breathe. And I’m saying: There’s an alternative, and the alternative is: stop all the humanitarian aid. Literally stop it. It is possible to get out of international agreements in order to bring about the decisive victory, this decisive victory which would be so morally justified, which would be so sensical, and which today we are stuck and don’t reach.”
Netanyahu Falsely Accuses Hamas of Causing Starvation in Gaza
On July 24, Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu used his platform at the U.S. Congress to evade the occupation's responsibility of preventing aid delivery to Gaza. Netanyahu described the International Criminal Court’s accusations that Israel is starving people of Gaza as “utter, complete nonsense” and a "fabrication.”
Moreover, Netanyahu claimed that Hamas was stealing aid, alleging that “the people of Gaza are suffering from hunger because Hamas is stealing food aid.”
The COGAT head, Ghassan Alian, also alleged that Hamas is continuing its efforts to seize humanitarian aid and distribute it in order both to make money and to preserve its role as ruler of the Gaza Strip. Alian claims that Hamas makes the aid distribution program more difficult but adds that Israel is continuously working to address this challenge.
Israeli officials have been making the claim that Hamas was stealing aid since October, a claim denied by U.N. aid agencies. U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator Lynn Hastings told CNN that Hamas was not stealing aid because aid was not coming in. Additionally, U.S. Special Envoy David Satterfield denied the allegations that Hamas had stolen aid, saying that no Israeli official had presented him or the Biden administration with “specific evidence of diversion or theft of assistance.”
Israel Evades Responsibility and Blames the U.N. for the Gaza Aid Crisis
Following warnings from multiple organizations about the looming threat of starvation for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians amid ongoing Israeli military actions on Gaza, Israel has shifted the blame to the United Nations for the insufficient distribution of humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip.
Israeli prime minister’s office spokesman David Mencer said in a news briefing that U.N. agencies, including UNRWA, the agency for Palestinian refugees, are responsible for the bottlenecks and claimed that “non-U.N. aid agencies have been able to deliver aid successfully.”
“It is unfortunately UNRWA and others, and the World Food Program is another one, who simply spend their time perpetuating this conflict rather than pulling their finger out and actually doing the job which they were designed to do. Stop blaming Israel,” he said.
The COGAT head, Ghassan Alian, also alleged that U.N. and international organizations are failing to make full use of the humanitarian aid that Israel has allowed through the Gaza border crossings, noting that 5,283 trucks entered Gaza during June but that only 3,414 were collected from the Gazan side of the crossings by the aid organizations.
Since the start of the Israeli war on Gaza in October, the Israeli government has repeatedly denied carrying out any intentional policy of starvation and continually underestimated the famine spread in Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu alleged that accusations of Israel limiting humanitarian aid were “outrageously false.”
“A deliberate starvation policy? You can say anything; it doesn’t make it true,” he said in a press conference.
In June, the digital aide to Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, Hananya Naftali, shared a photo allegedly showing a vegetable market in Gaza to deny famine spreading in Gaza.
However, Misbar’s investigative team found that it was taken back on January 18, 2024, and that it is older than claimed.
New Data Shows Israel's Siege Prevents 83% of Food Aid from Reaching Gaza
On September 15, a coalition of humanitarian groups estimated that Israel's siege is blocking 83% of food aid from reaching the Gaza Strip, where most of the population is hungry and at growing risk of starvation, nearly a year after the onset of the devastating conflict against the Palestinians in the area.
Furthermore, an update released by the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) notes that 46% of "humanitarian movements have been either denied or impeded in August, making it the most challenging month for humanitarian access since January 2024."
The analysis by 15 international aid organizations noted that a record-low average of just 69 aid trucks are entering the Gaza Strip each day, compared with an already insufficient 500 daily truckloads a year ago, and highlighted that more than 1 million people did not receive any food rations in southern and central Gaza. Furthermore, the groups said that "only 17 out of Gaza's 36 hospitals remain partially functional, and "critical infrastructure such as water networks, sanitation facilities, and bread mills" have been destroyed.
"While Israeli military attacks on Gaza intensify, lifesaving food, medicine, medical supplies, fuel, and tents have been systematically blocked from entering for almost a year," the aid groups—which include ActionAid, American Friends Service Committee, CARE International, Christian Aid, Islamic Aid, Oxfam International, and Save the Children—said in the statement.
The statement indicated that the percentage of blocked aid has increased from that of 34 percent in 2023, which means that the people in Gaza have gone from having an average of two meals a day to just one meal every other day.
“83% of required food aid does not make it into Gaza, up from 34% in 2023,” said the aid groups, which include CARE International, Save the Children, ActionAid, Oxfam, and Islamic Relief.
The statement asserted that the Israeli blockade is creating a humanitarian crisis, as the entire population of Gaza is confronting hunger and illness, with nearly half a million people at risk of starvation.
This is “driving a humanitarian disaster with the entire population of Gaza facing hunger and disease, and almost half a million at risk of starvation.”
Furthermore, the groups also estimated that 50,000 Gaza children aged 6-59 months urgently require treatment for malnutrition by the end of the year.
Additionally, the groups highlighted ways that life-saving aid is “systematically obstructed” on a daily basis in Gaza by Israel, including the denial of safety to aid workers and the sharp tightening of a 17-year blockade to a full siege.
"The situation was intolerable long before last October’s escalation and is beyond catastrophic now. Over 11 months, we have reached shocking levels of conflict, displacement, disease, and hunger,” said Jolien Veldwijik, Care Country Director in the West Bank and Gaza.
Six Tactics Employed by Israel to Block Aid Access
While humanitarian needs in Gaza are ever-increasing, U.N. aid agencies have detailed six main ways their life-saving aid is systematically obstructed daily by Israel.
These include the denial of safety, with more than 40,000 Palestinians and nearly 300 aid workers killed since last October. The sharp tightening of a 17-year blockade has turned into a full siege, preventing aid from entering Gaza. There are delays and denials that restrict the movement of aid around Gaza. Control of imports is tightly restrictive and unpredictable. Additionally, there has been the destruction of public infrastructure, such as schools and hospitals. Finally, civilians and humanitarian workers are being displaced, as witnessed again in recent displacement orders from the so-called “humanitarian zone” in Deir el-Balah.
Amjad Al Shawa, the director of the Palestinian NGOs Network (PNGO), an umbrella organization of 30 Palestinian NGOs and a partner of ActionAid, said there is a shortage of “all humanitarian items.”
“It’s the worst situation that we witnessed during the Israel war in Gaza.” Al Shawa added.
The founder of the Elpida relief organization, Amed Khan, said his group had unsuccessfully attempted to bring supplies into the territory for several months. Khan added that the amount of aid entering Gaza “is the absolute minimum needed to ensure that people don’t die immediately from starvation. They could die three years from now from extended malnutrition, but this is the minimum amount of trucks needed to ensure people don’t die immediately and avoid international outrage.”
While Israel has been reporting on its humanitarian efforts in relation to Gaza through the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), alleging that “the volume of humanitarian aid is determined, among other factors, by the ability of humanitarian organizations within the Gaza Strip to absorb the aid," reports from the ground clearly show otherwise, as the United Nations (UN) Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Martin Griffiths, declared that “delivering aid has become almost impossible” in Gaza.
Gaza Relief Aid Expired Due to the Israeli Blockade
Hundreds of trucks filled with food and medicine have been discarded in the Egyptian city of Al-Arish after they expired while waiting for authorization to enter the besieged area, where Israel's military operations have halted the aid flow despite severe humanitarian needs.
An official from the Egyptian Red Crescent confirmed to The New Arab that a large portion of the aid that arrived in Egypt through the Al-Arish International Airport, intended for the people of Gaza, had expired or was no longer fit for consumption.
According to a U.N. document, more than 2,000 aid trucks were waiting to enter Gaza as of 16 May, 1,574 of which were carrying food supplies.
One truck driver, Mahmoud Hussein, told Reuters his goods had been loaded on his vehicle for a month and are gradually spoiling in the sun. Some food is being thrown away or sold cheaply to locals.
“Apples, bananas, chicken, and cheese—a lot of things have gone rotten; some stuff has been returned and is being sold for a quarter of its price,” he said, sheltering from the hot sun under the shade of his truck.
“I'm sorry to say that the onions we're carrying will at best be eaten by animals because of the worms in them.”
Egyptian officials and sources told Reuters that Israeli military activity endangers humanitarian operations and that Israel needs to hand the Rafah crossing back to Palestinians for aid to fully resume.
The Crisis of Famine Still Looms Over Gaza
Over 2 million Palestinian civilians are facing a man-made humanitarian catastrophe, with famine and disease spreading due to a lack of aid access.
On September 12, Refugees International issued a new report about hunger in Gaza. The organization stated that research and analysis has corroborated evidence of a severe hunger crisis in Gaza and found consistent indications that famine-like conditions occurred in northern areas during the first half of 2024, contrary to the official Israeli pushback.
The report concluded that the Israeli military caused the famine in Gaza by throttling aid and by military actions that obstructed the distribution of any aid that did arrive, and that international pressure on the Israeli government in March and April, following warnings of imminent famine in Gaza, prompted a series of Israeli concessions around aid and commercial access. However, after Israel invaded and destroyed Rafah, displaced over a million people, and engaged in widespread military maneuvers that destroyed Rafah city, the food deliveries to the Gaza strip through Israeli checkpoints fell off a cliff.
The report added that previous projections of massive famine were temporarily averted, but deadly hunger is now again stalking 2 million people.
“Without a more widespread and enduring course correction on aid access, civilian protection, and humanitarian security, there remains a grave risk of famine conditions spiraling once again," Refugees International said.
Moreover, Refugees International warned that due to the IOF’s refusal to normalize free-flowing aid and as a result of several cumulative challenges imposed by Israel, Gaza was “always two weeks away from a famine,” according to one U.N. official.
Gaza Death Toll Exceeds 41,400
The Health Ministry in Gaza said on Tuesday that at least 41,467 people have been killed since last October.
The toll includes 12 deaths in the previous 24 hours, according to the ministry, which said 95,921 people have been wounded in the Gaza Strip since the brutal war on Gaza began.
Israel faces accusations of genocide at the International Court of Justice for its actions in Gaza.
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