Friday March 15, a boat from the Spanish NGO Open Arms carrying nearly 200 tons of food, or 300,000 meals prepared by another NGO, World Central Kitchen, arrived along the coast of the Gaza Strip. This is one of the first deliveries of humanitarian aid by sea to the Palestinian territory, devastated by the war which began on October 7. The barge was towed from Cyprus, the European Union country geographically closest to Gaza.
More than five months after the start of the conflict in the Gaza Strip, the 2.3 million displaced Palestinian civilians face a catastrophic humanitarian situation. According to the UN, “widespread famine” is now almost “inevitable”. In the northern part of the enclave, the most difficult to access, one in three children under the age of two suffers from severe malnutrition, according to Unicef. Start of the week, UNRWA also reported that at least “23 children died of dehydration and malnutrition in the northern Gaza Strip recently.” L’Express takes stock of the various operations which aim to transport more humanitarian aid to the Palestinian territory.
Land delivery
Most of the humanitarian aid arriving in Gaza passes by land, particularly via the south of the Strip, from the Rafah and Karem Abu Salem border crossings. According to UNRWA “the first 14 days of March saw on average the entry of 169 humanitarian trucks daily into the Gaza Strip”, a quantity well below that which was transported before the start of the war, namely 500 trucks – without forgetting the fact that food production in the territory has been seriously affected.
In addition, “the security necessary for the management of these crossing points was impacted by the death of several Palestinian police officers during Israeli airstrikes in early February,” said the UN agency in charge of Palestinian refugees. On Tuesday March 12, the United Nations tested a new route to deliver food to the northern Gaza Strip. The latter is normally used by the Israeli army and connects the kibbutz of Be’eri to Palestinian territory, indicates the Times of Israel. A spokesperson for the World Food Program, Shaza Moghraby, said the convoy had delivered the equivalent of 25,000 meals to Gaza City.
Airdrops
But in the face of Israel’s persistent blockages to the delivery of humanitarian aid, these deliveries remain too low given the needs of the civilian population. Several countries have therefore implemented alternative measures, by air, to transport food, water, fuel and even medicines.
In recent days, the United States, Jordan, Egypt, France, Belgium and the Netherlands have sent aid by air. For example, the United States sent 38,000 meals last week, in a joint operation with Jordan. But these airdrops are controversial, considered insufficient to meet the needs of 2.3 million Gazans, and not allowing optimal allocation of aid. Moreover, they prove dangerous: on March 8, Palestinian journalists reported from CNN the death of five people, crushed during the dropping of American aid on the Al Shati refugee camp.
Maritime corridor
Friday March 8, the European Union and the United States also announced the opening of a maritime corridor from Cyprus. “We are very close to the opening of this corridor, hopefully as early as this Sunday,” welcomed the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, at the port of Larnaca in southern Cyprus, on European Union country geographically closest to Gaza. The US military also announced it would build a temporary pier in the strip to transport cargo to the territory.
After the arrival of the first humanitarian aid boat on Friday, the spokesperson for the Cypriot Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Theodoros Gotsis, indicated this Saturday March 16 that a second ship, called “Jennifer”, was ready to leave “today ‘today (Saturday) or tomorrow (Sunday)’ for the Gaza Strip, via the same maritime humanitarian corridor. It will be loaded with 240 tonnes of food, including rice, flour, oil, canned proteins and vegetables as well as dates, a product traditionally consumed during Ramadan.
According to The worldanother operation is being developed by “the American company Forgow, founded by Sam Mundy, a former Marine Corps officer […] also passing through the Cypriot hub. A landing site has been identified on the coast, to the north” with the agreement of the Israeli administration and “in coordination with the United Nations.”