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full screen At times, emergency aid has also been released from the air, as here over Bayt Hanoun this spring. Photo: Maya Alleruzzo/AP/TT
Since the beginning of October, only a trickle of aid, a total of twelve trucks, has reached the thousands of people who remain in the northern Gaza Strip, according to the aid organization Oxfam.
During the period, Israel has given permission for 34 trucks to enter, but “deliberate delays and systematic obstacles” on the part of the military have since led to fewer than one in three of them actually managing to deliver food and water, among other things, Oxfam writes.
In connection with the anniversary of the Palestinian Hamas major terrorist attack, around October 7, Israel launched a military offensive in and around Jabalia, Bayt Lahia and Bayt Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip. Because of the acts of war, there are now feared to be many people there who do not have food and clean water.
“The situation in Gaza is apocalyptic and people are trapped, unable to find any kind of security,” said Sally Abi-Khalil, regional director of Oxfam, according to a press release.
Earlier during the war, Israel urged the Palestinians in the northern Gaza Strip to flee to the south. Many have also done so, but tens of thousands of people have not wanted or been able to leave their homes in the north.
Cogat, the responsible Israeli authority, writes that a total of “1,025 humanitarian aid trucks with food, water, medical and emergency housing materials” have been allowed into the Gaza Strip in the past week.
Even that number is low compared to the needs aid organizations describe, and most of the supplies that come in are assumed to go to the southern Gaza Strip.