( Middle East Monitor ) – The United Nations reported that 85 per cent of its requests to coordinate aid convoys and humanitarian access to northern Gaza were either blocked or delayed by Israeli authorities in the past month.
According to UN spokesperson, Stephane Dujarric, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) submitted 98 access requests for passage through a checkpoint in the Gaza Valley, but only 15 were approved.
He announced that “over the past three days, teams from OCHA, UN human rights agencies and other humanitarian groups have visited nine locations in Gaza City to assess the needs of hundreds of displaced families, many of whom are returning to northern Gaza.”
Dujarric expressed serious concerns for Palestinians still in northern Gaza due to the ongoing blockade, urging Israel to allow critical humanitarian operations.
Aid workers are deployed across #Gaza but their ability to operate is obstructed.
43% of our movements coordinated with the Israeli authorities in October were rejected and a further 16% faced impediments.#AccessDenied
The full update: https://t.co/8U9ae2Gwac pic.twitter.com/ElHtcuXy8n
— OCHA OPT (Palestine) (@ochaopt) November 12, 2024
Moreover, a new report from OCHA further reveals that humanitarian groups submitted 50 requests to enter northern Gaza in October, of which 33 were denied and eight were accepted but faced delays that disturbed their missions, according to a UN spokesperson.
The report says,
- “Humanitarian access to northern Gaza, particularly north Gaza governorate, was extremely limited. OCHA registered 98 attempts for coordinated movements to northern Gaza via the checkpoint along Wadi Gaza, of which 85 per cent were denied or impeded. Only 9 were able to move through the checkpoint without issues. Since approximately 6 October, the main towns of North Gaza governorate – Jabalya, Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahia – have been under an Israeli forces siege, with the access of humanitarian missions being blocked, with very few exceptions.”
OCHA added,
- “From 6 to 31 October, no humanitarian movements were facilitated by the Israeli authorities to Jabalya, Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya, the main towns in North Gaza. During this period, thirty-six (36) mission requests were submitted to access these areas, of which twenty-seven (27) were denied and nine (9) were impeded. Of the impeded missions, only three (3) were able to fulfill some of their objectives and three (3) were impeded so significantly it was not possible to achieve any movement objectives. In addition, 14 Erez West humanitarian cargo pick up missions intended to distribute humanitarian supplies in Jabalya were not facilitated to reach people in dire need of assistance.”
“Flying Dutchman,” Digital, Midjourney / IbisPaint, 2024.
The report comes amid an escalating humanitarian crisis, as northern Gaza faces severe famine conditions after over 50 days with no aid or supplies allowed in. UN agencies warn that the area’s hundreds of thousands of residents are enduring extreme violence, including forced displacement and life-threatening shortages of food and resources.
Tens of thousands of Palestinians, including dozens of patients in three hospitals in the northern Gaza Strip, were “in immediate danger of starvation or long-term health consequences”, the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor warned on Sunday.
The Monitor added that “Israel’s use of starvation as a weapon is one component of its ongoing genocide in the Strip, which also includes mass killings and forced displacement”.
Israel has continued a devastating offensive on Gaza since an attack last year by Hamas, despite a UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire.
More than 43,600 people have since been killed, mostly women and children, and nearly 103,000 others injured, according to local health authorities.
Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its actions in Gaza.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.Two paragraphs quoted from the OCHA report were inserted.
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