With only the Rafah crossing open to transit, additional controls are unlikely to affect the actual volume of aid entering Gaza.
Israel said it would set up additional inspection checkpoints for humanitarian aid trucks bound for the Gaza Strip, but they will only be allowed to enter through a single border crossing, which will have little effect on actual supplies arriving in the besieged enclave.
The Rafah crossing, between southern Gaza and Egypt, is the only point where a limited amount of aid is allowed to enter the territory, and the congested border has been unable to cope to the volume of incoming vehicles.
“In theory (the additional inspection points) should help,” as more trucks would go through the required security process, Tel Aviv Tribune’s Alan Fisher reported from occupied East Jerusalem on Tuesday, speaking about the Karem Abu Salem point , known as Kerem Shalom in 2007. Israel. Similar checks were already carried out at the Nitzana station.
“But there are people within the Israeli government who do not want to see trucks traveling from Israel to Gaza to deliver aid,” so the trucks are forced to bypass to reach the Rafah crossing in Egypt, he said. declared our correspondent.
This then leaves the reality on the ground unchanged since Rafah cannot process that many trucks in a day and ultimately the additional checks will not affect the actual aid entering Gaza.
Added to this is the fact that the Red Cross considers that the Rafah crossing is not safe since Israel’s assault is now focused on southern Gaza, where destroyed roads further exacerbate the peril faced aid deliveries, Fisher said.
Despite repeated calls from world leaders, international aid groups and United Nations officials to allow more aid into Gaza, Israel stressed Monday that no new direct crossings would be opened, but that Kerem Shalom would be used to carry out checks before sending the trucks. Rafah.
“This is done to improve the volume of security checks on aid entering Gaza through the Rafah crossing and will allow us to double the amount of humanitarian aid entering Gaza,” the military said on X.
The additional checkpoint will screen “trucks containing water, food, medical supplies and shelter equipment,” according to a joint statement from the Israeli army and COGAT, the Ministry of Defense’s agency. Defense in charge of Palestinian civil affairs.
Currently, only about 100 trucks enter Gaza via Rafah daily, the UN humanitarian agency OCHA said over the weekend. This represents only half of the strict minimum of 200 recommended by the UN to meet the basic needs of the population, while there were 500 before the war.
Philippe Lazzarini, director of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), described an “implosion of civil order” in which Palestinians in Gaza, who had not eaten for days, looted aid distribution centers and stopped trucks on the roads. as they tried to secure supplies for their families.
On Tuesday, he called for “an end to this hell on earth.”
Back #Gaza, a tragedy that deepens without end. People are everywhere, living on the streets, needing everything. They plead for security and for an end to this hell on earth.
We ask our colleagues to do the impossible in a situation that is impossible. pic.twitter.com/iiBFfk2rBG
– Philippe Lazzarini (@UNLazzarini) December 12, 2023
“The assault on southern Gaza was no less than on the north. This is currently raging in Khan Younis and threatening Rafah. The population compression is greater. We cannot be sure that any of our points of operation are safe,” Martin Griffiths, the UN humanitarian affairs coordinator, told Tel Aviv Tribune.
Griffiths added that UN aid workers were operating under a form of “humanitarian opportunism” in the Gaza Strip, which is not the typical characteristic of a humanitarian operation, which includes a level of reliability and security, both for aid workers and the people they serve. .
The UN General Assembly will meet later Tuesday to discuss the humanitarian crisis and call for a pause in hostilities, after the United States last week vetoed a UN Security Council resolution. UN in favor of a truce.
