CAIRO, March 25 — In mid-March, a line of trucks stretched for 3 kilometres along a desert road near a crossing point from Israel into the Gaza Strip. On the same day, another...
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The trucks were filled with aid, much of it food, for the more than 2 million Palestinians in the war-ravaged enclave. About 50 kilometres from Gaza, more aid trucks - some 2,400 in total - were sitting idle this month in the Egyptian city of Al Arish, according to an Egyptian Red Crescent official. Reuters interviewed more than two dozen people, including humanitarian workers, Israeli military officials and truck drivers, in tracing the tortuous route that aid takes into Gaza in an effort to identify the chokepoints and reasons for delays of supplies. Reuters also reviewed UN and Israeli military statistics on aid shipments, as well as satellite images of the border crossing areas, which revealed the long lines of trucks.
While the trucks struggle to get into Gaza, the need for aid has risen dramatically, both because of the vast number of displaced people and the devastation of key infrastructure in Israel’s assault. This includes the destruction of bakeries, markets, and farmland whose crops met some of Gaza’s food needs.
The war was triggered by a Hamas-led attack on communities in southern Israel on October 7 that killed 1,200 people and resulted in more than 250 being taken hostage, according to Israel. Since then, Israel’s assault on Gaza has killed more than 31,000 people, according to Gaza health authorities. The Israeli military says it approves almost 99 per cent of the Gaza-bound trucks it inspects and that once the goods are inside the enclave, it is the responsibility of the international aid organizations to distribute it. The inspection process “isn’t the impediment” to aid “getting into the Gaza Strip,” said Shimon Freedman, a spokesman for Cogat, the Israeli military branch that handles aid transfers.
UN agencies say solar panels, metal tent poles, oxygen tanks, generators and water purification equipment are among the items the military has rejected. The Israeli military says it can scan a total of 44 trucks an hour at Nitzana and at a crossing from Israel into Gaza where aid trucks are inspected, at Kerem Shalom. But aid agency officials say the actual number scanned is fewer. The military declined to say how many hours Nitzana and Kerem Shalom are open each day.
Under growing international pressure, Israel earlier this month initiated a new route for the delivery of aid directly to northern Gaza, known as the 96th gate. By March 20, Cogat said at least 86 international aid trucks had entered via the new crossing. In an incident that galvanized aid efforts, more than 100 people were killed in late February when a crowd descended on an aid convoy organized by Israel.
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