A provision to increase the aid entering Gaza under the ceasefire is welcome but insufficient, and shows Israel could have allowed more food, medicine and other supplies into the strip during the war, humanitarian and legal experts said.
The deal agreed this week allows for 600 trucks a day of aid to enter Gaza, where nine out of 10 Palestinians are going hungry and experts warn that famine is imminent in areas. Israel faces accusations it is using starvation as a weapon of war.
Tania Hary, the executive director of Gisha, an Israeli human rights organisation that petitioned Israel’s high court over the lack of aid entering Gaza, said: “We have said throughout the war that Israel could always have done more to surge the aid response and this clause is effectively an admission of that.
“We don’t deny that in the absence of hostilities it will be safer for the trucks and workers to move around Gaza but that was far from the only or defining factor in how much aid reached people.
“Our understanding is that Cogat [the Israeli authority in charge of coordinating aid] is ready to fast-track responses to aid requests to meet the target in the ceasefire agreement. I can’t think of anything more glaring as an admission that until now they have been doing the opposite.”
The new aid shipments will be divided across Gaza, with about 300 trucks going to the north, 250 to the south, and 50 trucks of fuel divided between the two areas for transportation and basic infrastructure needs, sources told the Guardian.
Supplies sent into northern Gaza are expected to be sourced from Jordan or arrive at Israel’s Ashdod port, while those sent into the south through Kerem Shalom are expected to come from Egypt, the West Bank and Israel.
The situation in Gaza is desperate. Nine out of 10 homes have been damaged or destroyed, 1.9 million people are displaced, the medical system is crippled and there is little access to clean water.
Juliette Touma, the communications director for Unrwa, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, said: “People have lost everything, they need everything. Any increase, any improvement from what we have today, is going to be very welcome.”
Still, provisions under the deal are far from enough. Before the war, when Gaza had a functioning economy and farms supplying fresh produce, about 500 trucks entered daily. Over 15 months of fighting, shipments never approached that level. In recent months, UN figures showed just a few dozen trucks entering.
Hassan Jabareen, the director of the human rights NGO Adalah, which is also part of the high court petition on aid access, said: “It is similar to the amounts before the war, but that was to meet routine needs in an organised way. Now, after the war, there are serious shortages and people have much greater needs.”
Israel denies allegations it is deliberately starving Palestinians in Gaza. Officials have repeatedly said they put “no limits” on how much aid entered during the war, blaming shortages on logistical failures at humanitarian organisations and violence inside the strip.
Itamar Mann, an associate professor of law at the University of Haifa, said this was “not a credible argument” even before the ceasefire, and the deal could be evidence of a war crime.
“To put it simply, the fact that the deal increases the amount of aid illustrates that Israel is controlling, and has controlled throughout the war, the amount of aid that enters the Gaza Strip,” Mann said.
“This does reflect that Israel has intentionally decreased the amount of aid, which is evidence of a war crime in a situation where parts of the population is suffering from starvation as a consequence.”
Cogat and the Israeli military did not respond to questions about provisions to increase aid or how it would be achieved.
Changes expected to smooth the aid surge include lifting limits on how much cash humanitarians can take into Gaza and opening two border crossings into the north simultaneously.
Getting aid over the border is only the first step to tackling hunger, however. Challenges on the ground include navigating damaged roads, shortages of trucks, ruined warehouses and the breakdown of civil order in some areas.
More than three-quarters of Gaza’s population is sheltering in the south after Israeli evacuation orders, but most of the aid is due for delivery in the north.
A corridor controlled by Israeli forces bisects the strip. If people are not allowed to cross this to return home – or to where their homes once stood – the aid supplies may be separated from much of the population.
The challenges would be magnified under an Israeli law, due to come into force in weeks, that targets Unrwa, which has been the backbone of aid logistics in Gaza for decades.
“This bill should not be implemented,” Touma said. “Unrwa is the largest humanitarian organisation in Gaza and the world is going to need us to do this.”
As an occupying power, Israel is legally responsible for making sure food reaches the hungry, Mann said. “The logistics of distribution inside Gaza is as important as ensuring aid deliveries to Gaza.”
Michael Sfard, an Israeli human rights lawyer, said legal obligation to provide for the basic needs of civilians meant food and other supplies should be a part of military planning, not used as leverage in a deal.
“This [part of the agreement] is astonishing to me,” Sfard said of the provision to surge aid. “Because it is a clause that essentially says Party A agrees to abide by international law.”
