Israel says it is building a new land crossing into northern Gaza, where famine is worst, after previously promising to open the Erez crossing. The new border crossing could handle up to 50 aid trucks per day, and the first trucks have already crossed, Israeli officials say.
Israel has also said it will allow use of the nearby deep-sea port of Ashdod and allow additional aid imports from Jordan through the Kerem Shalom border crossing in southern Gaza.
On Wednesday, April 10, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant spoke of gradually increasing aid deliveries to Gaza to the pre-war level of 500 trucks per day.
The number of trucks entering Gaza rose and then fell over the week, with only 147 trucks entering Gaza on Thursday.
It follows the killing of seven aid workers by the Israeli military on April 1, which prompted the US to call on Israel to prevent civilian harm and humanitarian suffering if it wants to maintain US support.
Israel imposed a siege on the Gaza Strip after Hamas attacked surrounding Israeli communities, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking about 250 into Gaza as hostages. It hit Gaza with an air and ground attack that killed more than 33,000 people, mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-run health authority.
Israeli authorities have since allowed some aid shipments, but the U.N. and aid groups say some children have died of malnutrition.
On Wednesday, USAID Administrator Samantha Power said famine was already raging in parts of the Gaza Strip.
How many trucks are on the road now?
The number of trucks carrying food and other supplies to the Gaza Strip increased – but has since declined.
On April 8, 419 aid trucks arrived, including 330 trucks carrying food, according to Israeli authorities – more than double the March average of 140 food trucks per day.
However, UN officials told the BBC that the figure on April 8 was actually 223, less than half the daily figure they said was at least needed to contain the crisis.
UN officials told the BBC that the discrepancy was because Israeli screening requirements meant that trucks were often only half full. After border checks, the goods are loaded onto a new set of inspected trucks to continue on to Gaza, which are almost full.
On Friday, Cogat, the Israeli agency that coordinates government activities in the occupied territories, said that only 147 trucks carrying aid had entered the Gaza Strip, while 208 trucks, including only 112 carrying food, had been distributed within the Gaza Strip .
This included an unknown number of food trucks entering the northern Gaza Strip through the new border crossing, which Israeli media said was near the Zikim kibbutz, west of the Erez crossing.
The Israeli military said the trucks were accompanied by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers.
On Friday, Philip Lazzarini, head of the United Nations’ Palestinian refugee agency, UNRWA, said the increase in aid was “not yet tangible, sustained or uninterrupted.”
Blame is violence and hunger
Humanitarian organizations, Israel’s allies and other countries accuse Israel of not doing enough to ensure food reaches those who need it. Some have accused Israel of using hunger as a weapon of war.
All aid to Gaza is subject to strict Israeli security controls to prevent anything that could be used by Hamas from entering. But aid groups say these are complex, arbitrary and cause significant delays.
Israel has denied blocking aid from entering Gaza and accuses aid agencies of failing to distribute it. On Thursday, Cogat said the contents of hundreds of aid trucks in the Gaza Strip were waiting to be picked up, saying: “UN, do your job. The bottlenecks are not on the Israeli side.”
As conditions worsened, there was also deadly violence during the delivery of aid in the Gaza Strip.
In one incident, the Israeli military killed seven aid workers working for World Central Kitchen (WCK), a charity with which Israel worked to distribute aid arriving by boat from Cyprus. Israel apologized and took action against the affected unit.
There were regular reports of shootings at Palestinians as they gathered to receive the little aid that had arrived in the northern Gaza Strip. The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza and local Palestinians have accused Israeli forces of firing on desperate people. In the bloodiest incident, more than 100 people were killed on February 29 when a convoy arrived on al-Rashid Street in Gaza City.
Israel has denied involvement in the deaths, saying Palestinians died in clashes, were run over by trucks and shot by Palestinian gunmen, and that Israeli troops directed fire at people they deemed “suspects.”
Israel has banned UNRWA from delivering aid to the northern Gaza Strip over allegations that some UNRWA staff were involved in the October 7 Hamas attack. Cogat said Israel would work with organizations that are “not involved in terrorism.”
The Crisis Group think tank called Israel’s aid distribution process a “fiasco” and accused it of “failing to coordinate military and humanitarian action.” It also said Israel was trying to bypass the international aid system and instead use aid convoys to build a network of actors to manage Gaza after the war.
“It directs aid to large families willing to embrace its agenda, while targeting those who refuse,” the think tank said.
The UN’s top human rights official, Volker Türk, said in a recent BBC interview that Israel bore significant blame and that there was a “plausible” case for Israel using starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza.
Mr Türk, the UN high commissioner for human rights, said if intent were proven it would amount to a war crime.
Israel’s Economy Minister Nir Barkat dismissed Mr Türk’s warnings as “complete nonsense – a completely irresponsible statement”.
What is Ashdod Port and how does it help?
The port of Ashdod, 32 km (20 miles) north of Gaza, is one of Israel’s three main cargo ports and can handle more than 1.5 million containers a year.
However, there are no reports of Gaza aid being received in Ashdod. On Wednesday, Israel’s Channel 12 reported that no preparations had been made to open Ashdod to humanitarian supplies.
Since not enough aid supplies were reaching Gaza by land, countries tried alternative routes by air and sea – but these too were fraught with problems.
Of the two plans to bring food and other supplies to Gaza by sea, only one was put into operation and has now been interrupted after the Israeli military attacked WCK, the aid organization that unloaded the supplies from a jetty it had built and spread rubble.
Last month, the first ship to reach Gaza under the program arrived from Cyprus – the closest EU country to Gaza – towing a barge carrying around 200 tonnes of food provided by the WCK.
As of the end of March, WCK head José Andrés said that 67 WCK kitchens were operating in Gaza, feeding 350,000 people daily.
Meanwhile, a separate U.S. military plan is being planned to involve a U.S. Navy ship carrying materials to build a floating dock and pier so supplies can reach shore on much larger cargo ships.
According to the US Department of Defense, this could bring two million meals into the Gaza Strip every day. However, it is not expected to be ready for months.
Resort to air drops
The United States, Jordan, Egypt, France, the Netherlands and Belgium are among the countries that have stopped aid to Gaza, but aid groups say the technique is a last resort that cannot meet needs alone.
At least 20 Palestinians were reportedly killed in aerial drops – five when an aid package’s parachute failed to open and the box fell on people waiting below, and the others when aid packages fell into the sea and desperate people drowned in the attempt to retrieve them.
Air forces such as Britain’s RAF typically drop their supplies at an altitude of just 400 feet (120 m), but the Israelis have stipulated that they cannot do so lower than 2,000 feet (610 m). This means that the parachutes have a long time for the wind to blow them off course, which is why some airdrops have landed in the sea in recent weeks.
A C-130 transport aircraft can carry 21 tons of relief supplies – about as much as a single truck can carry. There is also no way to organize distribution on site.
The U.S. first aid mission conducted with Jordan on March 3 contained food for more than 38,000 meals. On April 11, the US Central Command (Centcom) announced that the US had dropped a total of 855 tons of humanitarian aid.