Humanitarian aid trucks began traveling to Gaza Friday morning through a temporary dock built by the U.S. military, the first aid to be sent to Gaza by sea in two months. But the new shipments of food and other goods fall far short of what humanitarian groups say is needed to address the staggering levels of hunger and poverty in Gaza.
A day earlier, the U.S. military said it had anchored a floating dock and causeway off the Gaza Strip, a key step in completing the maritime corridor announced by the Pentagon in March. U.S. officials and international aid groups have said sea freight complements but cannot replace deliveries by land crossings.
The U.S. military said Friday that no troops had entered the Gaza Strip, emphasizing that it was only providing logistical support to deliver supplies donated by several countries and organizations.
The 2.2 million civilians in the war-torn country are more dependent than ever on humanitarian assistance. Seven months of Israeli bombing, strict Israeli checks and restrictions on transit points have already severely limited what can be entered. And over the past week and a half, the flow of supplies through the main land route in southern Gaza has slowed to a trickle since Israel launched a military offensive around the city of Rafah.
Aid groups continue to report that the situation in Gaza is becoming increasingly dire. “I’ve never seen anything like this anywhere on Earth,” Janti Soeripto, president and CEO of Save the Children US, told the New York Times.
Israel is under pressure from the Biden administration and other allies to do more to ease the flow of aid, and Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said this week that fighting in and around Rafah has undermined recent improvements in aid deliveries. I warned you that it was happening.
More than 630,000 Gazans have fled Rafah since Israel began its military offensive there on May 6, according to the main UN agency supporting Palestine. Many people have moved to the central city of Deir al Balah, which the UN agency known as UNRWA said on social media is now “an unbearably crowded city with miserable conditions.”
This week, senior diplomats from 13 countries, including all members of the Group of Seven industrialized democracies (G7) except the United States, said in a joint letter that Israel must take “urgent action.” The New York Times published a copy. To address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. The letter to Israel’s foreign minister urges Israeli authorities to increase the amount of aid flowing into the territory, take “concrete measures” to protect civilians and work toward a “sustainable ceasefire.”
At a hearing last Friday at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, lawyers representing Israel defended the military operation in Rafah as “limited and localized” and argued judges should not seek to limit Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip.
The hearing by the court, the United Nations’ highest judicial body, is part of a case filed in December last year by South Africa, which accuses Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. In late January, the court ordered Israel to do more to prevent acts of genocide, but the main case on whether genocide was being committed is not expected to be heard until next year.
Last week, South Africa asked judges to issue an emergency order to prevent mass civilian casualties in Rafah. South African lawyers argued in court Thursday that Israel’s Operation Rafah was “the final step in the destruction of the people of Gaza and Palestine.”
On Friday, Gilad Noam, Israel’s deputy attorney general for international law, reiterated Israel’s strenuous denial that it is committing genocide in Gaza. He said Israeli authorities were working to facilitate the flow of humanitarian aid and protect civilians amid heavy fighting across the territory, including Rafah.
“Israel is trying to confront the enormous complexity that such a situation presents,” Mr. Noam told the judges. “So there was no large-scale attack on Rafah, but a specific, limited and localized operation based on the premise of supporting evacuation efforts and humanitarian activities.”
The Israeli military said it was working with the U.S. military to support the temporary dock project as a “high priority.”
The supplies that began arriving Friday were only a fraction of what Gaza needed, according to the U.S. Agency for International Development. These included food bars for 11,000 people, therapeutic food for 7,200 malnourished children, and hygiene kits for 30,000 people. The British government said it had sent 8,400 temporary shelters made of plastic sheets.
“More support will follow in the coming weeks, but we know sea routes are not the only answer,” British Chancellor Rishi Sunak said in a statement.
It was not immediately clear where or when aid would be delivered to the isolated region. The United Nations World Food Program (WFP) said in a statement that it would handle logistics in Gaza for aid coming through the docks, including coordinating trucks, supervising the loading of supplies, dispatching warehouses and delivering them to humanitarian partners.
Pentagon officials said they initially aimed to transport about 90 trucks by sea each day, but would increase that to about 150 trucks once operational capabilities reach their limits. Before the war began last October, about 500 trucks loaded with commercial goods and aid arrived in Gaza every day.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III spoke about the maritime corridor during a call with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Thursday, according to the Pentagon. According to the department, Mr. Austin emphasized the need to “increase” humanitarian assistance to Gaza through land border crossings in addition to docks.
Lt. Gen. Brad Cooper, deputy commander of Central Command, emphasized that the dock only supplements the flow of relief over land and is the most efficient and effective route to move the necessary amount of assistance.
One of Gaza’s two main aid corridors in Rafah, on the Egyptian border, has been closed since Israel launched a military operation against Hamas fighters there. Israel closed a second major intersection in Kerem Shalom after a Hamas rocket attack killed four Israeli soldiers last week. The crossing has since reopened, Israel said.
Aid group World Central Kitchen built a temporary dock in mid-March to deliver aid by sea to Gaza for the first time in nearly two decades. But these efforts came to an abrupt halt in early April when seven group employees were killed in a strike in Israel.
