Israel Is Restricting Aid More Than Ever, UNRWA Warns as Millions Starve
The amount of humanitarian aid entering Gaza hit yet another record low in October, the UN reports, as Israeli forces have worsened their blockade as part of their apparent campaign to exterminate every Palestinian in north Gaza and destroy conditions of life across the Strip.
On Monday, UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini reported that Israeli officials allowed only 30 trucks of humanitarian aid to enter Gaza each day on average last month. This is the lowest level of aid entry since the very first weeks of Israel’s genocide in October 2023, when Israeli forces imposed a near-total blockade.
This represents just 6 percent of the roughly 500 trucks of aid that Israeli officials allowed into Gaza each day before the genocide — which was already insufficient to maintain the health of the impoverished population. Lazzarini warned that banning UNRWA from operating in Gaza, as Israeli officials are poised to do, will only lead to more death for those still in Gaza.
“This cannot meet the needs of over 2 million people, many of whom are starving, sick, and in desperate conditions,” he said in a statement. “Restricting humanitarian access and at the same time dismantling UNRWA will add an additional layer of suffering to already unspeakable suffering.”
According to Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor’s communications chief, Muhammad Shehada, 30 trucks a day is equivalent to 187 grams, or about six ounces, of food per person per day — less than half a can of beans. And this is only if all 30 trucks are filled to the brim with food, which is not the case, as aid trucks also carry crucial supplies like medicine, clothes, tents and hygiene kits.
“The food Israel is now allowing to Gazans is AT BEST less than 45 percent of what prisoners got in Stalin’s Gulag Concentration Camps,” Shehada noted on social media.
The amount of aid entering Gaza has been declining for months, as Israel has steadily intensified its campaign of mass killing and starvation. Over the past four weeks, Israel has been closing in on total extermination and ethnic cleansing of north Gaza, allowing almost zero aid into the region as it relentlessly bombs and systematically clears out any life remaining in the neighborhoods there.
On Friday, a group of 15 UN and humanitarian groups released a statement warning that Israel is aiming to wipe out all Palestinians left in north Gaza. Gaza officials have estimated that roughly 100,000 people are left in north Gaza, trapped by Israel’s brutal ground invasion.
“The situation unfolding in North Gaza is apocalyptic. The area has been under siege for almost a month, denied basic aid and life-saving supplies while bombardment and other attacks continue. Just in the past few days, hundreds of Palestinians have been killed, most of them women and children, and thousands have once again been forcibly displaced,” the groups wrote.
“The entire Palestinian population in North Gaza is at imminent risk of dying from disease, famine and violence,” they continued.
The statement was signed by the heads of major aid groups like the UN humanitarian agency, Oxfam, UNICEF, the World Food Program and the World Health Organization.
Even as Palestinians in north Gaza face death by starvation, disease or dehydration, the Israeli military’s bombardments and assaults have continued apace. On Tuesday, Israel struck a home sheltering multiple displaced families in Beit Lahia, killing at least 20 Palestinians, including six children, according to Gaza officials.
The strike followed a series of attacks directly on Kamal Adwan Hospital, the only partially functioning hospital left in the region. Health officials said that all parts of the hospital are under attack by Israeli forces. Several newborn babies have reportedly been killed as part of the raid.
“The hospital does not operate as a health facility now. It’s more of accommodating injuries and the dead who are brought to the hospital,” reported Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud on Monday. “The entire northern part of the Strip is left without any proper healthcare facility, the whole healthcare system is gone, is completely collapsing.”