By Michelle Nichols
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) -The United Nations food aid agency needs quick approvals by Israel for its trucks to move into Gaza if it is to take advantage of Israel’s planned humanitarian pauses in fighting, a senior World Food Programme official said on Sunday.
Facing growing global condemnation as the World Health Organization said mass starvation had taken hold in Gaza, Israel said on Sunday it would halt military operations for 10 hours a day in parts of the enclave and allow new aid corridors.
“We need not just words, but we need action there. We need to have really fast clearances and approvals,” Ross Smith, WFP director of emergencies, told Reuters on Sunday. “If the waiting times are going to continue to be 10 hours, then we won’t be able to take advantage of these pauses.”
COGAT, the Israeli military aid coordination agency, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Since Israel lifted an 11-week blockade on Gaza on May 19 and allowed the U.N.-led humanitarian operation to resume limited deliveries, a key U.N. complaint has been lengthy delays by Israel in allowing convoys to leave the crossing points to transport aid to warehouses and distribution points inside Gaza.
U.N. data shows that only less than 8% of 1,718 WFP trucks made it to their destination within Gaza in the nearly ten weeks since Israel lifted its blockade. The rest were looted by “either peacefully by hungry people or forcefully by armed actors during transit,” according to the U.N. data.
Israel requires the U.N. and other groups to offload their aid at the crossing point and then send trucks from within Gaza to collect it and transport it within the war-torn enclave, where some 2.1 million people remain.
“Everybody can see them driving in, and so they know that food is about to be loaded on them, and they start to wait and crowd,” said Smith, adding that some convoys can wait up to 20 hours before Israel gives them the green light to enter Gaza.
“If they are sitting there for 10 hours, loading and waiting, then at that point you have 10,000 people crowding outside,” he said.
Israel controls all access to Gaza and says it allows enough food aid into the enclave, where it has been at war with Palestinian militants Hamas for nearly 22-months. It accuses Hamas of stealing aid, which the militants deny. The U.N. says it has not seen evidence of mass aid diversion in Gaza by Hamas.
Jordan and the United Arab Emirates parachuted 25 tons of aid into the Gaza Strip on Sunday in their first airdrop in months, a Jordanian official source said, adding that the air drops were not a substitute for delivery by land.
Smith said air dropping aid was “purely symbolic at the very best.”
The war in Gaza was triggered on October 7, 2023, when Palestinian militants Hamas killed 1,200 people in southern Israel and took some 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies. Since then, Israel’s military campaign has killed nearly 60,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health authorities.
(Reporting by Michelle Nichols, additional reporting by Charlotte Greenfield, Editing by Nick Zieminski)
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