“We wouldn’t have done this if we weren’t in need,” a Gazan said Sunday.
Thousands of residents broke into United Nations (UN) warehouses and aid distribution centers located in the south and center of the Strip and took flour and other basic supplies, such as hygiene items.
This was reported in a statement published this Sunday by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA).
“This is a worrying sign that civil order is beginning to crumble after three weeks of war and a strict siege on Gaza,” said Thomas White, director of UNRWA in the Strip.
“People are scared, frustrated and desperate. Tensions and fear are worsening with cuts in telephone and internet communication lines. “They feel like they are alone, isolated from their families within Gaza and the rest of the world.”
Meanwhile, doctors and the Palestinian Red Crescent in Gaza reported, this Sunday, that Israel told them to evacuate Al-Quds hospitalwhich is key in Gaza City and where there are at least 400 patients being treated.
“In the current situation, evacuating patients, including those in intensive care, those on life support and babies in incubators, is almost impossible, if not impossible,” said a statement issued by the International Federation of Societies of the Red Cross and Red Crescent.
It is also believed that around 14,000 civilians are refugees in the medical center and its surroundings, where explosions were heard this Sunday.
“People are hungry”
The impact of Israel’s war against the radical militant group Hamas has been devastating for thousands of families in Gaza.
“We have no flour, no aid, no water, not even toilets,” Abdulrahman al-Kilani told the AFP news agency.
“Our houses were destroyed. Nobody cares about us. We call on the people of the world. All international powers are against us. “We needed help and we wouldn’t have done this if we weren’t in need.”
Outside the Deir al-Balah distribution depot in the center of the Strip, Um Samer al-Attar described the conditions faced by residents of the area.
“We need water, we need food, we are hungry,” he said.
“This is totally unfair. Our children can’t sleep (of hunger and thirst). “We need to give them water and food.”
Phone lines and internet connections have been slowly returning after a near-total communications blackout in Gaza on Saturday.
Abeer Etefa, a spokeswoman for the World Food Program (WFP), said the entry of people into the warehouses of several aid distribution centers in Gaza was “to be expected” due to the “difficult conditions faced by the population.”
Speaking to the BBC on Sunday, Etefa said that “the bottom line is that people are desperate, they are hungry.”
He believes that Saturday’s telephone and internet blackout may have contributed to what happened at warehouses and distribution centers.
According to the official, the WFP had to stop its food distribution because He was unable to communicate with the teams on the ground.
“We are resuming it today (Sunday) as service is slowly returning.”
In fact, in its statement on Sunday, UNRWA noted that to date, just over 80 trucks of aid crossed into Gaza in a week and that on Saturday There was no convoy due to the communications cutoff..
UNRWA, which is the main body for receiving and storing aid in the Gaza Strip, was unable to communicate with the different parties involved to coordinate the passage of the convoy.
“The current convoy system is destined to fail. Too few trucks, slow processes, strict inspections, supplies that do not meet the requirements of UNRWA and other aid organizations and, above all, the current fuel ban, are a recipe for a failed system.”
“We call for a regular and steady flow of humanitarian supplies into the Gaza Strip to respond to needs, especially as tensions and frustrations rise,” White said.
Israel inspections
Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry said more than 8,000 people have been killed in Gaza since Israel began bombing the territory.
The World Health Organization said Friday that 40% of those killed were children.
Hamas killed more than 1,400 people in Israel in the October 7 attacks, most of them civilians, and took more than 200 hostages, prompting an Israeli military reaction.
The Secretary General of the UN, Antonio Guterres, warned that, Every hour, the situation in Gaza becomes more desperate and reiterated his call for a ceasefire.
Israel said Egypt and the United States would expand humanitarian aid to Gaza on Sunday.
However, Egypt blamed Israel’s inspection regime for the delay.
Ahmad Abou-Zaid, a spokesman for Egypt’s foreign ministry, said hundreds of trucks carrying aid to Gaza were being held up by what he called Israel’s complicated scrutiny.
“Humanitarian safe zones”
BBC journalist Wyre Davies, who is in Jerusalem, noted that a division of the Israeli army responsible for overseeing civil affairs in Gaza (COGAT) said on Sunday that it would allow an increase in supplies through the Rafah crossing. in the coming days.
A spokesman said the aid (not related to fuel) would be distributed through the UN in what he called “humanitarian safe zones” in southern Gaza, around Khan Younis.
The UN and other aid agencies have described the situation in Gaza as a humanitarian crisis. With an average of fewer than 20 trucks carrying basic aid crossing the border each day, the need has become enormous.
But the COGAT spokesman suggested that the crisis in Gaza was not as serious as aid agencies indicated.
In a briefing, he said that “there was no shortage of food” in Gaza, that the water supply was “sufficient to meet humanitarian needs” and that Israel had opened two water supply lines in the south.
The spokesman also implied that there were many medical supplies but that Hamas strictly controlled them.
BBC correspondent Rushdi Abualouf said from a refugee camp in Gaza that some 2,000 families are struggling to find water, food and toilets, and there is very little medicine for those who need it.
The UN has repeatedly called for fuel is included in aid shipments since it is vital for the operation of medical facilities and other infrastructure such as water desalination plants.
But that has been repeatedly refuted by Israel, which says existing fuel supplies were tightly controlled by Hamas and that alternative energy supplies, including solar, were available for hospitals.
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