The United Nations has repeatedly reported that Gaza is experiencing an unprecedented humanitarian crisis, with hundreds of thousands of people on the brink of starvation. Israel is under increasing pressure to ease the humanitarian burden on Gazans.
A break from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m., every day: refugees from part of the Gaza Strip will have a daily respite, declares the Israeli army. An announcement which concerns an area going from Kerem Shalom, a passage in the south of Israel to the Salaheddine road in Gaza then towards the north of the Palestinian territory.
The IDF wants to observe this pause until further notice to allow the entry of more humanitarian aid into the Palestinian territory devastated by more than eight months of war and threatened with famine.
But, according to an Israeli official, *Mr. Netanyahu had made it clear to his military secretary Aluf Avi Gil that these breaks were “unacceptable for him”.*
The military announcement was also criticized by the Minister of National Security of the Jewish state, Itamar Ben-Gvir: according to him, the person who made this decision was a “imbecile” and that those responsible should be fired.
This dispute is the latest in a long series between members of Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition and the army over the way the war, which is in its ninth month, is being waged in the Palestinian enclave.
It comes a week after centrist former general Benny Gantz left the war cabinet, saying Mr Netanyahu did not have an effective strategy in Gaza.
Humanitarian crisis
The United Nations has repeatedly reported that Gaza is experiencing a humanitarian crisiswith widespread hunger and hundreds of thousands of people on the brink of famine.
Israel is under increasing pressure to ease the humanitarian burden on Gaza.
From May 6 to June 6, the United Nations received an average of 68 trucks of aid per day, according to figures from the United Nations Humanitarian Office, known as OCHA. That figure is down from 168 trucks per day in April and well below the 500 trucks per day that aid groups say they need.
Humanitarian needs have only grown as more than a million Palestinians have crowded into the southern and central Gaza Strip.
COGAT, the Israeli military body that oversees aid distribution in Gaza, says there are no restrictions on truck entry. It says more than 8,600 trucks of all kinds, both aid and commercial, entered Gaza through all crossing points between May 2 and June 13, an average of 201 per day. But much of this aid accumulated at crossing points and did not reach its final destination.
UNRWA said less than a third of Gaza’s health centers were operational and more than 50,000 children needed treatment for acute malnutrition. UNRWA is the United Nations agency responsible for helping Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
But Israel criticized the United Nations for not allowing aid to flow to Gaza. The UN denies this allegation. She claims that fighting between Israel and Hamas often makes it too dangerous to transport UN trucks inside the Gaza Strip to Kerem Shalomwhich is right next to the Israeli border.
She also claims that the pace of deliveries has been slowed because the Israeli military must allow drivers to come to the site, a system that Israel says was designed to ensure the safety of drivers. Due to the lack of security, aid trucks were sometimes looted by crowds while traveling on Gaza’s roads.
The new agreement aims to reduce the need to coordinate deliveries by providing an uninterrupted 11-hour window each day to allow trucks to enter and exit the crossing point. It was not immediately clear whether the military would ensure the safety of aid trucks as they passed through the highway.
Additional sources • adaptation: Serge Duchêne
