Trucks carrying humanitarian aid, including food, medicine and water, began entering the besieged Gaza Strip on Saturday through the Egypt-controlled Rafah Crossing. Television pictures showed trucks moving into the border crossing area from the Egyptian side. According to local authorities, only about 20 trucks will enter the territory on Saturday, bringing a limited amount of aid. Meanwhile, catastrophic conditions in Gaza continue for its more than 2 million inhabitants as heavy Israeli bombardments, from the air, sea and land, continue almost uninterrupted.
Trucks have been lined up near Rafah for several days waiting for the border to open. Saturday’s humanitarian convoy is the first time that aid has been allowed to enter Gaza since armed Palestinian groups launched a surprise attack on Israel on October 7 that killed some 1,400 Israelis and foreign nationals, triggering an Israeli bombing campaign and a total Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip.
Martin Griffiths, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, welcomed today’s announcement that an aid convoy has entered Gaza.
“The 20-truck convoy includes life-saving supplies provided by the Egyptian Red Crescent and the United Nations which are approved to cross and be received by the Palestinian Red Crescent, with the support of the United Nations,” he said in a statement from Cairo.
The delivery follows days of deep and intense negotiations with all relevant sides to make sure that aid operation into Gaza resumes as quickly as possible.
“I am confident that this delivery will be the start of a sustainable effort to provide essential supplies – including food, water, medicine and fuel – to the people of Gaza, in a safe, dependable, unconditional and unimpeded manner,” Griffiths said.
“Two weeks since the start of hostilities, the humanitarian situation in Gaza – already precarious – has reached catastrophic levels. It is critical that aid reaches people in need wherever they are across Gaza, and at the right scale.”
The Emergency Relief Coordinator added that the people of Gaza had endured decades of suffering.
“The international community cannot continue to fail them,” he said.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres stressed Friday that the dozens of aid trucks that were stuck at the border of Egypt and the Gaza Strip are a "lifeline" that must be allowed to deploy.
"We need, we absolutely need to have these trucks moving as quickly as possible and as many as necessary," Guterres said.
"We are not looking for one convoy to come; we are looking for convoys to be authorized, with meaningful numbers of trucks to go everywhere into Gaza to provide enough support to the Gaza people," he added.
Top UN humanitarian and political officials were at the Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza, negotiating to end the stalemate that has prevented the delivery of humanitarian aid for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who have been under siege imposed by Israel in violation of international humanitarian law. Guterres was in Egypt with Griffiths and UN Under-Secretary-General for Political Peacebuilding Affairs Rosemary DiCarlo, trying to get a large convoy of relief supplies massed at the border moving into Gaza.
“What has to be made clear is that they are doing what they can to have a sustained humanitarian access and a flow of aid that gets into the country in a steady way, a sufficient way, and a safe way,” Alessandra Vellucci, director of the UN Information Office in Geneva, told journalists Friday.
More than 2 million people live in Gaza. Israel had agreed to allow limited humanitarian assistance to begin flowing into Gaza from Egypt, with the caveat that it would be subject to inspections and that it should go to civilians.
"And I know that there is also an agreement between Egypt and Israel to make it possible," Guterres said. "But these announcements were made with some conditions and some restrictions."
He said the United Nations was in discussions with Egypt, Israel and the United States to clarify the conditions and limit restrictions to get the aid trucks moving.
A UN spokesperson told reporters in New York Friday that Guterres wants to see a mechanism in place for fast but serious verification of aid trucks crossing Rafah; he wants the role of the Egyptian Red Crescent and other Egyptian institutions to be recognized; and he wants to make sure the UN agency that assists Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), has fuel in Gaza, so it can distribute relief supplies.
No food, fuel, water or medical supplies have gone into Gaza and the territory has been under a complete electricity blackout for days.
“For the past two weeks, the war has continued, unabated. In the Gaza Strip, relentless air strikes and bombardments, coupled with evacuation orders issued by the Israeli Forces, have displaced nearly 1 million people and caused the death and injuries of far too many civilians,” said UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini in a statement Saturday.
Following a large-scale attack by Palestinian armed groups on October 7, the Israeli cabinet declared a state of war and the military begun launching indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks in the Gaza Strip, killing more than 4,100 Palestinian civilians and wounding more than 13,100. 70 percent of the fatalities are reportedly children and women. More than 1,000 people are reported missing and presumed to be under rubble, awaiting rescue or recovery.
“Half a million people are currently sheltering in UNRWA facilities across the Gaza Strip. They have come to these UN facilities in search of safety, and protection. In Khan Younis and Rafah – in the south of the Gaza Strip - shelters have become overcrowded. Many have taken refuge in UNRWA buildings that were not set up to be shelters, where the living conditions are just untenable”, he said.
About 1.4 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) are estimated in Gaza, with more than 544,000 sheltering in UN installations in increasingly dire conditions. At least 30 percent of all housing units in the Gaza Strip have been either destroyed or damaged since the start of the hostilities.
“Civilians - wherever they are - must be protected. The life of all civilians, the integrity of all UN facilities and premises, as well as civilian infrastructures, including hospitals, must be shielded from harm and protected at all times under international humanitarian law,” Lazzarini said.
“Let me be clear: protecting civilians in times of conflict is not an aspiration or an ideal; it is an obligation and a commitment to our shared humanity.”
Lazzarini echoed the calls from the UN Secretary-General on all parties to reach an urgent humanitarian ceasefire.
“This is the only way out of this mayhem; any other way will plunge Gaza – and the world – deeper into fathomless, dark depths,” the UNRWA chief stressed.
Guterres, who had called this week for an immediate humanitarian cease-fire, said Friday it would "make things much easier and much safer for everybody," but it was not a prerequisite for aid to go into Gaza.
While the United Nations waited for the green light, its agencies flew more than 3,000 tons of supplies to Rafah. The World Food Programme (WFP) had 1,000 tons of ready-to-eat and canned food — enough to feed nearly half a million people for one week — at Rafah or on the way there. The World Health Organization (WHO) said Friday that more medical supplies had arrived at the Egyptian airport closest to the Rafah crossing, enough to cover 1,000 surgeries.
On Friday, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) warned that the lack of fuel was compounding the already dire conditions in Gaza. UNRWA stocks of medicines also continue to decrease. More than 36 UN installations in Gaza have been impacted by Israeli airstrikes and bombardments since the military campaign began. At least 17 UN staff have been killed.
In its situation report issued Friday, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said the full electricity blackout, compounded by the ban on the import of fuel to run backup generators, entered its eleventh consecutive day, with devastating consequences on the access to health care and drinking water. Increasing water consumption from unsafe sources elevates the threat of infectious disease outbreaks.
Human rights organizations have expressed deep concern about incidents where civilians and civilian objects appear to have been directly targeted by Israeli airstrikes. The international human rights group Amnesty International said in a report - released Friday - that it has documented unlawful Israeli attacks, including indiscriminate attacks, which caused mass civilian casualties and must be investigated as war crimes.
The organization spoke to survivors and eyewitnesses, analyzed satellite imagery, and verified photos and videos to investigate air bombardments carried out by Israeli forces between October 7 and 12, which caused horrific destruction, and in some cases wiped out entire families.
Amnesty International is calling on the Israeli authorities to immediately end unlawful attacks and abide by international humanitarian law; including by ensuring they take all feasible precautions to minimize harm to civilians and damage to civilian objects and refraining from direct attacks on civilians and civilian objects, indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks.
The rights group also called on the Israeli government to immediately allow unimpeded delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza’s civilians and urgently lift its “illegal blockade on Gaza, which amounts to collective punishment and is a war crime, in the face of the current devastation and humanitarian imperatives.”
In addition, Amnesty International is calling on the international community and particularly European Union member states, the United States and the United Kingdom, to take concrete measures to protect Gaza’s civilian population from unlawful attacks, and refrain from any statement or action that would, even indirectly, legitimize Israel’s crimes and violations of international humanitarian law in Gaza.
Further information
Full text: Statement by Martin Griffiths, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, on aid delivery into Gaza, UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), statement, released October 21, 2023
https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/statement-martin-griffiths-under-secretary-general-humanitarian-affairs-and-emergency-relief-coordinator-aid-delivery-gaza
Full text: From UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini - The Gaza Strip: The protection of civilians an absolute, solemn obligation at all times, UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), statement, released October 21, 2023
https://www.unrwa.org/newsroom/official-statements/from-unrwa-commissioner-general-philippe-lazzarini
Full text: Damning evidence of war crimes as Israeli attacks wipe out entire families in Gaza, Amnesty International, press release, published October 20, 2023
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/10/damning-evidence-of-war-crimes-as-israeli-attacks-wipe-out-entire-families-in-gaza/