Despite talks on accelerating deliveries, Gaza still not getting enough aid

There is still not enough humanitarian aid entering the Gaza Strip.

Only 39 trucks of aid reached Gaza from Egypt on Tuesday, a small proportion of the 93 trucks that departed from Egypt to the Awja-Nitzana border crossing between Egypt and Israel, where the trucks are inspected for approval to continue to Gaza, an Egyptian Red Crescent source told Mada Masr on condition of anonymity.

Tuesday’s convoy was slightly larger than those that began to trickle into Gaza in week three of Israel’s ongoing onslaught on the besieged coastal enclave, with officials from Egypt, the United States and Israel saying that deliveries will now start arriving faster.

But international aid agencies working in the strip and Palestinian health authorities say that the quantity of aid reaching over two million people trapped in Gaza is still nowhere near sufficient to the escalating humanitarian need.

Egypt, overseeing the deliveries via the Rafah border crossing, has complained that the security inspections Israel insists on are slowing the lifeline of crucial supplies reaching Gaza, while the United Nations has also appealed for the inspection system to be expedited. 

Aid deliveries to Gaza were entirely halted shortly after the outbreak of war in the wake of Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 operation. Though aid shipments prepared by charitable organizations in Egypt and flown in by Turkey, Qatar, the UAE and other countries began to pile up in North Sinai’s Arish, four Israeli airstrikes hit the Rafah border crossing in the first week of war.

Negotiations between Israel, the United States and Egypt finally secured an agreement on aid deliveries which began on October 21. But Israel placed a set of restrictive conditions on the convoys, which has compromised their effectiveness.

Among these conditions are hefty security checks on the trucks. Instead of going directly northward into the Gaza Strip, trucks moving from Egypt are obliged to travel south from the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing. They are inspected by Israeli authorities at the Awja crossing, located around 45 kilometers away from Rafah, before they can drive back to Rafah to enter Palestine. Each truck must unload its cargo at a checkpoint for inspection for possible arms and ammunition and then reload when the check is complete, another UN official has said.

“It is not reasonable for trucks to be reinspected at the Israeli Nitzana crossing, and for each truck to travel an additional 100 km before entering the Gaza Strip through the Rafah crossing,” Egypt’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson said last week.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres also said on Friday that “the verification system for the movement of goods through the Rafah crossing must be adjusted to allow many more trucks to enter Gaza without delay."

Israel’s restrictions also prohibit the delivery of any fuel at all to the strip, which needs the vital resource to power desalination plants for drinking water, generators powering hospitals that have no other access to electricity, and to distribute the aid deliveries that have reached the strip thus far.

Israel has also prohibited all aid deliveries to northern Gaza as it continues to insist that the residents evacuate the entire northern part of the strip. Residents are refusing, especially given that evacuating the thousands of injured from hospitals in the northern part of the strip is impossible.

Talks on humanitarian aid deliveries were a key part of Sunday’s telephone conversation between US President Joe Biden and President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. The discussion appeared to establish an agreement to accelerate aid deliveries to Gaza, though public statements after the call left it unclear how such an acceleration would happen. While Egypt called for a humanitarian ceasefire to facilitate deliveries — a condition the UN also says is necessary to allow aid in — the US continues to stand against a ceasefire.

Israel appeared to have agreed to an acceleration of the deliveries, with Israeli newspapers quoting an unnamed US official on Tuesday as saying that Israel had agreed to raise the number of aid trucks allowed to enter to 100 trucks per day after intense US diplomatic efforts.

US National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby also said on Monday that Biden “did receive a commitment that Israelis will endeavor to support a significant increase in the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza” during a call the US president had on Sunday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

And Netanyahu said on Monday that Israel seeks “to move the population to the southern Gaza Strip,” where there will be “safe space” to which humanitarian aid will be directed “in coordination with our American friends.”

But so far, it is hard to see the impact of talks on aid deliveries, with only 39 of the 93 trucks that left Egypt on Tuesday reaching the population of Gaza.

“Let me be clear — the handful of convoys being allowed through Rafah is nothing compared to the needs of over 2 million people trapped in Gaza,” said United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini on Monday. 

“The system in place to allow aid into Gaza is geared to fail unless there is political will to make the flow of supplies meaningful, matching the unprecedented humanitarian needs.”

The UN has said that before the war, around 500 trucks entered Gaza per day. So far, Egypt has said that only 250 trucks in total have reached the strip during the four weeks of the war thus far.

But sources from the Red Crescent say the total number is even fewer. Palestinian Red Crescent official Mahmoud Aboul Atta told Mada Masr on Monday that only 144 trucks in total were delivered since aid started entering the strip on October 22, while the Egyptian Red Crescent source said that, after the additional 39 trucks entered on Tuesday, the total number is now 183 trucks.

Meanwhile, shipments of aid continue to wait in Egypt to be delivered. A statement from the North Sinai Governorate quoted the head of the Egyptian Red Crescent branch in the governorate as saying that 57 aid planes arrived at Arish Airport carrying 1,343 tons of various aid provided by 19 Arab and foreign countries and 14 international organizations, all of which were stored in seven secured warehouses in Arish. More than 20 Egyptian institutions and organizations also provided 270 trucks carrying 4,000 tons of various aid.