More than 2 million people in Gaza who have survived nearly six months of intense bombardment are now at risk of dying of starvation.
Trucks loaded with food, medical supplies and other necessities are being held up at the border for days, waiting for approval from Israeli authorities.
Some days, fewer than 10 trucks are able to reach the Gaza Strip. On others, more than 200 enter the Palestinian enclave, according to U.N. figures. Before the beginning of the hostilities, more than 500 trucks a day were able to get in.
“Our biggest worry is that we still don’t have access,” Cindy McCain, head of the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP), told POLITICO in an interview this week in Brussels.
McCain said enough food to feed the entire Gaza population for months was “ready to go in.” But access was not being granted.
“We need consistent, sustained and safe access,” urged McCain.
The famine crisis is deepening as Israeli forces continue their devastating ground offensive in retribution for the Oct. 7 attacks, in which Hamas militants killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took around 250 hostages.
Famine is imminent in northern Gaza, an international monitoring group warned this week, and there is a risk of famine across the rest of the strip.
The toll of Gazans killed by Israeli bombing has surpassed 31,000 people — including 13,450 children — according to the health ministry’s latest count. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres has also estimated the death toll at more than 30,000. At least 25 deaths, mostly children, from malnutrition and dehydration, have been reported by the U.N. in recent weeks.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has disputed that death toll, and denied that people are starving in Gaza.
Yet, two months after the International Court of Justice — whose rulings are binding under international law — ordered Israel to ensure access of humanitarian aid into the enclave, the situation “hasn’t changed,” said McCain, who was attending an international humanitarian forum.
“The lack of respect for humanitarian law is a large part of the troubles we’re having not being able to deliver aid,” she added.
Responding to criticism of the U.N. agencies, McCain said that the conflict was politically “highly charged” on both sides. She advised “that people take a look at the needs and what we do.”
In the meantime, Israel plans to move forward with a major military operation in Rafah, the supposed safe zone where over half of the people living in Gaza had taken refuge. Such an attack would be a “mistake,” U.S. President Joe Biden said earlier this week.
European Union leaders will also call for a cease-fire at their summit on Thursday, according to draft conclusions seen by POLITICO.
“The international community has to stay firm and make sure that Israel allows more humanitarian aid to get in. If not, we are all accomplices,” Belgian Minister of Development Cooperation Caroline Gennez told reporters after the humanitarian forum.
Land routes or starvation
The first delivery of humanitarian aid sent by sea from Cyprus reached the starving residents of Gaza on Tuesday, a week after the boat carrying 200 tons of food from Spanish NGO Open Arms and U.S. charity World Central Kitchen (WCK) set sail.
However, experts and U.N. officials have repeatedly said that neither sea nor air deliveries can make up for blocked land convoys.
“Sea routes and airdrops are good [but] it’s taking away a lot of the focus on the real problem, which is access,” McCain said, adding that land routes were “the only feasible way.”
For Lahib Higel, senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, the fact that “the U.S., Europe and even Arab countries are resorting to sea corridors and airdrops — because they just can’t compel Israel to facilitate access in a reasonable way — says quite a lot of how politically locked the situation is.”
According to the expert, land routes are the most effective way of getting aid on a regular and consistent basis, yet “Israel has been very consistent in its rejection to improve this [routes].”
Not only are inspections at the border crossings slow, but there are also no clear rules on which items get in and which don’t — resulting in “very ad hoc” judgments.
“This is a political decision,” Higel said, adding that the reason why it hasn’t changed yet is because the international community wasn’t putting enough pressure on Israel. “The reality is that it’s only political pressure and political leverage that is going to change Israel’s behavior.”
Catastrophic dependence
A large part of the Gaza population, most of them refugees, was already dependent on humanitarian aid before the conflict escalated.
“Gaza was before the war the greatest open-air prison. Today it is the greatest open-air graveyard,” the EU’s top foreign affairs official Josep Borrell said Monday, as EU foreign ministers met in Brussels to discuss the Gaza crisis.
But Palestinians were also extremely dependent on Israel. Not only for getting aid into the enclave — which mainly came via Israel, but also from Egypt — but also in terms of infrastructure and public services.
When the war started “Israel cut off the electricity [and] water,” Higel explained, adding that “there’s very few ways to bypass Israel.”
What has become clear, according to the expert, is that “the situation was already unsustainable, and it has had catastrophic consequences.”
“This is a problem that is not related to this war specifically,” she added, “but it’s the magnitude of the conflict that is exacerbating this vulnerability.”