“What will come in the next few days [a Gaza] It is a bit of flour for bakeries and for public kitchens that give a daily ration of cooked food. Civilians will receive a pita bread and a plate of food. That’s all. ”Thus described Monday the ultra -rightist Minister of Finance Israeli, Bezalel Smotrich, the food that the population of Gaza will receive in the next few days. What its governing partner, Prime Minister Benjamín Netanyahu weeks denying.
That humanitarian aid will be lean and include flour are two of the few things that are known about what will enter the next few days in the Palestinian territory invaded, if Israel fulfills its commitment. Its executive not only has not specified what other foods will be distributed these days, but also who will take care of it, or in what amount. Less is still known when that food will arrive regularly to Gaza, or if the limited relief of the total blocking at aid entry will include medicines and other vital supplies that are cruelly missing in Gaza.
The Israeli government has only assured that on Monday they were authorized to enter the enclave five trucks with “meals and medicines for youngsters.” The UN raised that number to nine. On the 12th, UNICEF warned that, in Gaza, there were already 71,000 children who were going to need urgent treatment to avoid acute malnutrition. Half of the population of the territory, 2.1 million, are lower.
These trucks are “a drop of water in a necessity ocean,” says Bushra Khalidi, responsible for incidence of the International Oxfam NGO. Before the war, every day they entered the territory between 500 and 600 vehicles of large tonnage, but, in addition, the needs are now much larger. “Immense,” describes Khalidi, after 19 months of attacks that have killed at least 53,500 people and injured more than 120,000, and hundreds of thousands of homes, cultivation fields, farms and infrastructure of drinking water and destroyed sanitation.
Gaza’s humanitarian situation, catastrophic even during the top fire with Hamas that Israel broke on March 18, became unsustainable when the Israeli army resumed the bombing that day so as not to have to negotiate the end of the war. However, he had already begun to worsen on March 2, when Netanyahu closed the border at the entrance of food, medicines, fuel and any type of humanitarian aid. That situation lasts eleven weeks.
On the 12th, the reference index on nutrition used by the UN warned that, if Israel did not allow food to entry in Gaza before September, the entire town of the enclave could suffer by then “acute meals insecurity.” Of those two million long Palestinians, half a million look directly to the famine. That situation will not change now because Israel accepts that some “symbolic convoys” enter the territory with food, criticizes the Oxfam cooperator.
“What Gaza wants is that entry to humanitarian help is totally restored, which we’re allowed to work on worldwide organizations and {that a} fireplace is reached,” says Khalidi. Then remember that the population of Gaza, “along with being hungry, is being bombed.”
A “actual humanitarian response”, continues, “can’t be diminished to distribute flour. We are usually not speaking about survival, however of dignity. It is about having hospitals working, having medicines and different medical provides, supplies to restore infrastructure, of shelters for displaced individuals,” adds Khalidi.
The cooperative echoes an accusation defended by numerous humanitarian organizations: that Israel uses hunger as a gun of war. For example, the United Nations Agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), whose general commissioner, Philippe Lazzarini, reiterated that accusation on April 22. He also assured that this country uses humanitarian aid as “foreign money.”
A statement signed on Monday by 26 great international humanitarian donors – among them the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Spain – urges Israel to allow the resumption of the delivery of aid by the United Nations and international NGOs “to save lives, reduce suffering and maintain dignity”.
Also 30 Israeli pacifist organizations have influenced the same arguments in a manifesto: “Israel should instantly cease their assaults, put an finish to their famine coverage, open the border crossings for the entry of assist to Gaza and permit assist organizations within the strip to hold out their work,” says the document.
The UN humanitarian coordinator, Tom Fletcher, used on Monday in a statement the same expression as Bushra Khalidi: “A drop in an ocean of necessity.” In his text, confirmed another of the few aspects that are known about the resumption of food entry in Gaza: which will last a few days. Those late by the Netanyahu government in launching a controversial plan whose design israeli responsible attribute to the United States, but they support. This was confirmed on Monday at a press conference in Jerusalem Eden Bar Tal, director of the Israeli Foreign Ministry.
A “surplus” of food
This plan consists in attributing to an opaque organization based in Geneva (Switzerland) -the Humanitarian Foundation for Gaza (GHF in its acronym in English) -, the responsibility of distributing humanitarian aid. The cast will occur in several distribution centers that are already being built in the south and center of the territory, showed satellite images revealed by the BBC chain. There the food will begin to be delivered in June, according to the calculations of the Israeli government.
Israel’s decision to allow a small amount of foods in the strip to also aim to gain time to open those facilities and reducing the international pressure in the meantime. Since the beginning of the Israeli block in Gaza, at least 57 children have died from malnutrition, according to the World Health Organization.
To do this, Israel will cross the territory to “dozen of vans,” said Bar Tal. Without specifying their number or their content, he said they will be “sufficient” to meet the needs of the Gazatí population in the missing days for those centers to begin to work.
The UN agencies and international NGOs have already communicated to Israel that they will not participate in that project. Only the previous step that provides for the mass displacement by military order of the population of Gaza to the south – could constitute a war crime.
The preparations for this alleged American and Israeli humanitarian plan run in parallel and, according to some humanitarian organizations, serve the purposes of the military operation cars of Gideon, which Israel unleashed last weekend. For example, when anticipating that displaced people are concentrated in surrounding areas to the distribution points whose “perimeter” – the director of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed – will be guarded by the country’s troops. Inside these areas, American private security companies will be; That is, mercenaries, who will “assure safety,” said the official.
Eden Bar would elude Monday to answer the questions about what these private companies will be. Nor did he want to respond to how the GHF is financed. For Bushra Khalidi, what Israel is starting are not a help distribution sites, “however army management areas, the place beneficiaries will turn out to be prisoners.”
While Netanyahu and his ally Smotrich recognized on Monday to have given green light to the entry of food in Gaza so that their allies allow them to continue their war, the director of the Foreign Ministry recovered the official discourse of their country until this Sunday: deny hunger. Bar Tal said that, thanks to the “25,000 vans with assist” that, according to Israel, entered Gaza in just over 40 days during the top fire, the Gazati enjoyed a “surplus” of meals.
https://elpais.com/internacional/2025-05-20/la-ayuda-que-israel-permitira-entrar-en-gaza-una-gota-de-agua-en-un-oceano-de-necesidad.html