UN humanitarian office: No aid getting into Gaza

The United Nations says no goods for humanitarian operations are entering the Gaza Strip through either the Rafah or Kerem Shalom crossings because of Israeli military operations around the crossings, with bombardments throughout the day. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) says this is disastrous for the relief effort in the embattled territory, where 2.3 million people are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance.

“We are engaging with all involved with the resumption of the entry of goods, including fuel, so that we can again begin managing incoming supplies. However, the situation remains extremely fluid, and we continue to confront a range of challenges, amid active hostilities,” UN spokesman Stéphane Dujarric said Wednesday in New York.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reports that between May 1 and May 5, an average of 48 trucks and more than 160,000 liters of fuel entered Gaza daily through the Rafah crossing.

“We need all of that fuel to sustain our humanitarian operations for the civilians in the Gaza strip who so desperately need it,” the UN spokesman said.

The UN is counting on Israeli cooperation and facilitation to get these crossings operational again, as stocks of critical supplies, including fuel, are dwindling by the hour.

“We remain committed to providing aid to people regardless of where they are. Our teams are still in Rafah, which is where well over one million people, including 600,000 children, have been sheltering,” Dujarric said.

“We are also extending our presence northward to assist, as we can, families who are on the move,“ he added.

In a statement released Tuesday, the head of OCHA and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Martin Griffiths, said the conflict in Gaza is at another critical juncture, warning that Israel’s latest evacuation orders and ground operations will bring more death and displacement.

“In just a matter of days, tens of thousands of people have been forcibly displaced yet again. The closing of the Rafah crossing severs access to fuel and shuts off the movement of aid and staff to and from Gaza,” Griffiths said.

He said that civilians in Gaza must be protected and have their basic needs met, whether they move or stay – and those who evacuate must have enough time to do so, as well as a safe route and safe place to go.  

OCHA reports that most people being displaced from Rafah are traveling to Khan Younis and Deir Al Balah using cars, trucks, tok-toks and donkey carts via the three main roads connecting those areas with Rafah.

“The decisions that are made today and their consequences in human suffering will be remembered by the generation that follows us. Let us be ready for their reproaches,” the Emergency Relief Coordinator said.

OCHA has warned that ongoing hostilities and the continued blockage of critical humanitarian supplies from entering Gaza will have serious consequences for the provision of food and nutrition services – and make it impossible to improve conditions at new and existing displacement sites.

“We currently have no physical presence at the Rafah crossing as our access to go to that area for coordination has been denied by COGAT,” said Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the UN humanitarian office on Tuesday.

COGAT is the Israeli agency that coordinates government activities in the Palestinian territories.

“That means that the two main arteries for getting aid into Gaza have been choked off,” he said.

“We are seeing the beginning of a military incursion. Rafah is in the crosshairs. IDF [Israel Defense Forces] is ignoring all warnings about what this could mean for civilians — and the humanitarian operation — in Rafah and the entire strip,” he said.

Laerke told journalists in Geneva Tuesday that Rafah is the only entry point for fuel, noting that without diesel for trucks to transport aid inside Gaza, and without fuel to run generators, equipment, and communication, “the entire aid operation is in jeopardy.”

“We have been told that there is about one day of fuel available for all of Gaza,” he said. “If no fuel comes in for a long, prolonged period of time, it would be a very effective way of putting the humanitarian operation in its grave.”

Israel has ordered 100,000 Palestinians to evacuate eastern Rafah Monday to so-called safe zones, in advance of a military offensive in the southern Gaza city. This, despite the Palestinian armed group Hamas agreeing Monday to a truce proposal that would see Israeli hostages exchanged for Palestinian prisoners.

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s office claimed the cease-fire proposal was “far from Israel’s essential demands,” but that Israel would send negotiators to Cairo to continue talks.

The United Nations says that the IDF has designated 76 percent of Gaza’s territory as “an evacuation zone.” That, it warns, will have terrible repercussions for more than 1.2 million people in Rafah as many of the obligations enshrined in international humanitarian law governing evacuation orders are not being met.

“What this means in humanitarian terms is that people are being forcibly relocated, yet again, sometimes for the fourth, fifth, sixth time, to places that are not safe,” said Ravina Shamdasani, spokesperson for the UN human rights office.

“These people include people who have been disabled as a result of the conduct of hostilities,” she said. “They are being relocated to places that do not have the infrastructure or the resources to be able to host the mass displacement of this large number of people with such diverse needs.

“Israel has strict obligations under international humanitarian law to ensure the safety and access of these individuals to medical care, to adequate food, to sanitation,” she said. “Failure to meet these obligations may amount to forced displacement, which is a war crime.”

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) warns that a military incursion in Rafah “would pose catastrophic risks” to hundreds of thousands of children sheltering in the enclave.

“Rafah is a city of children. More than half of every single girl and boy in Gaza live in Rafah,” said James Elder, UNICEF spokesperson, Tuesday.

“Our worst fear — Gazans’ nightmare — appears to be a reality,” he said. “If we define safety — as International Humanitarian Law says we must — as freedom from bombardment, as well as access to safe water, sufficient food, shelter and medicine —then there is nowhere safe on the Gaza strip to go to.

“Families’ coping capacity has been smashed. They are hanging on — physically and psychologically — by a thread,” he said. “People are exhausted. People are malnourished. Children are sick.

“In fact, hundreds of thousands of children in Rafah have a disability or vulnerability that puts them in even greater jeopardy and makes it that much more difficult for them to relocate, even if there was somewhere left to go.”

The World Health Organization (WHO) says only three hospitals currently are functioning in the Rafah area and “all are overwhelmed” and receiving more cases than they can handle.

WHO spokesperson Margaret Harris said Israel has advised people in El-Najar hospital in Rafah to leave. “Now they are not moving. They are staying open and continuing to accept patients,” she said.

“They are also the only place now in Gaza where dialysis is taking place. They are doing around 200 dialyses per day. So, again, if they are no longer functioning if they are shut down, it means that those people will die simply from kidney failure because that is what is keeping them alive.”

UNICEF’s Elder said children in Gaza are suffering from “an unprecedented level of trauma,” especially after this weekend’s events, which saw the continued killing of children, more attacks from the warring parties, “and now evacuation orders.”

“That is what we are seeing again in these children who are told pick up your last surviving remnants of your life and we move from tent to tent. That is also what is happening to children in Rafah now.

“That has to change. Indeed, this is the last chance for this to change,” he said.

Half of Gaza's population - some 1.1 million people - face catastrophic levels of hunger and starvation, with famine now imminent or already occurring in northern Gaza. The entire population of the Gaza Strip - some 2.3 million people - suffers from high levels of acute food insecurity.

In a related development on Tuesday, leading international humanitarian organizations said they see no significant improvement from the Israeli authorities in addressing the dire challenges to providing life-saving assistance to Gaza's 2.3 million residents, including those in northern Gaza.

“The Israeli authorities have not implemented the pledged commitments they made on April 6, 2024, following the killing of seven World Central Kitchen (WCK) staff, to facilitate increased humanitarian access in the Gaza Strip”, the non-governmental organizations (NGOs) said in a joint report.

The briefing was prepared by CARE International, Handicap International - Humanity & Inclusion, Médecins du Monde, Norwegian Refugee Council, and Oxfam International.

More than 34,800 people, mostly women and children, have been killed and more than 78,400 others injured by Israeli security forces in Gaza since October 7 last year. Among the dead are more than 14,500 children and more than 9,500 women.

The fatalities include at least 260 aid workers, 191 UN staff, 493 health workers and 142 journalists. More than 10,000 others are feared buried under the rubble in Gaza and are presumed dead.

Some information for this report provided by VOA.

Further information

Full text: UN relief chief: The conflict in Gaza is at another critical juncture, Statement by Martin Griffiths, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, released May 7, 2024
https://www.unocha.org/news/un-relief-chief-conflict-gaza-another-critical-juncture

Full text: One month after Israel's seven commitments on humanitarian access: The realities on the ground as Rafah military offensive unfolds, NGO briefing note, released May 7, 2024
https://www.medecinsdumonde.org/app/uploads/2024/05/FINAL_Joint-INGO-Public-Briefing-Note_Realities-on-the-ground.pdf