A deadly Israeli strike on an aid convoy run by the World Central Kitchen in Gaza has already undermined attempts to address the hunger crisis in the territory, with aid groups saying they are more wary of making deliveries and at least two suspension operations.
After the attack that killed seven of its workers, World Central Kitchen halted its work in Gaza and sent three ships with hundreds of tons of food back to port in Cyprus. The food was meant to be unloaded at a makeshift jetty in northern Gaza set up by the group, which says it has provided 43 million meals to Gazans since the war began.
Gaza faces what United Nations officials say is a man-made humanitarian crisis, as Israel’s war and restrictions on aid have fueled hunger that experts say is on the verge of famine. The most dire shortages are in northern Gaza, and aid groups say that, in the short term at least, killing aid workers will make things worse there.
“Humanitarian aid organizations cannot carry out their work safely,” the International Committee of the Red Cross said on Wednesday.
Another aid group, American Near East Refugee Aid, or Anera, which said it has operated in the Palestinian territories for more than 55 years, also announced that it its work is suspended in Gaza. The United Nations has stopped moving at night for at least 48 hours from Tuesday to review security, the organization’s spokesman, Stéphane Dujarric, told reporters according to Reuters.
The UN’s World Food Program is still running during the day, he said. “As the famine closes we need humanitarian staff and supplies to move freely and safely throughout the Gaza Strip,” Reuters reported him as saying on Wednesday.
The World Food Program and UNRWA, the main UN agency supporting the Palestinians, have long said they face unacceptable barriers to aid delivery, including Israeli restrictions on deliveries and lawlessness in northern Gaza.
“Our staff have guided our work, and they, themselves, feel that there is a target on their back,” Sandra Rasheed, Anera’s country director in Gaza and the West Bank, told the Al Jazeera network.
Michael Capponi, the founder of the Global Empowerment Mission, a nonprofit aid group, said he would reconsider his plans to travel to Gaza next week. Some staff members “basically want to pack up and go home now,” he said.
Gaza has faced an Israeli blockade for more than a decade, backed by Egypt, but since the war began in October, residents say the amount of food available has fallen sharply.
“There is no aid or anything coming down to us,” Rawan al-Khoudary, who lives in northern Gaza, said in an interview. She said in an interview that her baby, Anwar, died a few weeks ago, in part because of a lack of nutrition. Another resident of northern Gaza, Ezzeldine al-Dali, 22, said his family received only one bag of flour as aid, which lasted several days.
In recent weeks, the United States, other countries and aid groups have increased pressure on Israel to allow more aid to enter Gaza, a territory of more than two million people. Israel, which announced a siege on Gaza at the start of the war, has said it does not place limits on the amount of aid that can go into the territory, but wants to prevent food or other supplies from falling into the hands of Hamas.
Countries including the United States, France, Jordan and Egypt have increased their use of airdrops to get aid to Gaza, and the World Central Kitchen ships are part of a multinational plan to create a maritime route that will deliver aid from Cyprus. As part of an effort to increase sea shipments, the United States military is building a temporary pier off the coast of Gaza, but it will take several weeks.
The United Nations says the only effective way to adequately increase aid is by truck.
Figures from the United Nations show that the number of aid trucks entering Gaza through the two main crossings, Kerem Shalom and Rafah, both in the southern part of the enclave, increased in March by nearly 75 percent compared to February.
Overall, however, an average of about 117 aid trucks have entered Gaza each day since October 7, down about 75 percent from pre-war numbers, UN data show. The World Food Program estimates that 300 food trucks is needed every day to meet the basic food needs of people.
Despite the short-term difficulties, the strike could fuel a push for a ceasefire, said Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council and a former UN emergency relief coordinator.
He said it could also push governments to step up efforts to protect aid workers, push for more entry points for aid and speak out more forcefully against Israel’s planned invasion of Rafah, the southern city. of Gaza where more than a million people have gathered in an attempt to escape the conflict.
The aid workers are part of a growing death toll from Israeli bombing, which has killed 203 since the start of the war, most of them Palestinians, according to Aid Worker Security Database.
“The international aid workers have gotten more attention than the previous 200 Palestinian aid workers who were killed, which of course is tragic,” Mr. Egeland said. “But this could provide the watershed moment we’ve been waiting for.”
Hiba Yazbek contributed reporting.
