‘No limit’ on Gaza aid as Israel says famine fears based on ‘biased data’
Israeli officials denied there were famine conditions in northern Gaza, hours ahead of a United Nations Security Council meeting to discuss the issue.
Palestinians loot aid trucks carrying humanitarian aid that arrived from a US-built offshore pier on May 18, 2024. Photo by Majdi Fathi/TPS-IL
Meanwhile, an expert told The Press Service of Israel that Israel already places no limits on aid allowed into the Strip.
A declaration of famine would trigger restrictions on American military aid to Israel, with other countries likely to follow suit. The outgoing Biden administration gave Israel a November 12 deadline to take specific measures to address northern Gaza’s humanitarian situation.
The declaration would be based on the findings of the UN’s Famine Review Committee, which assesses famine conditions. The FRC issued an emergency alert on Friday, claiming “a strong likelihood that famine is imminent in areas within the northern Gaza Strip,” and that “immediate action, within days not weeks, is required.” The Israel Defense Forces rejected the alert, saying it was based on “partial, biased data and superficial sources with vested interests.”
Israel’s Coordinator for Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), which coordinates civilian issues between the Israeli government, military, international community and the Palestinian Authority in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip rejected the accusations.
“To date, all projections by the IPC [the FRC’s framework for assessing famine] have proven incorrect and inconsistent with the situation on the ground, with the IPC reports consistently predicting deterioration and then reporting improvement. Unfortunately, this is because the researchers continue to rely on partial, biased data and superficial sources with vested interests,” COGAT tweeted.
It added that since October, 600 aid trucks have entered northern Gaza alone even as the Israel Defense Forces battles Hamas efforts to re-establish itself there.
In addition, COGAT tweeted that there are 700 truckloads of undelivered humanitarian aid piling up at the Kerem Shalom border crossing. On several occasions in the past year, COGAT has called on the UN to “scale up” its aid distribution of food, water and medicine as thousands of undelivered aid pallets pile up on the Gaza side of the border crossings.
No Limit on Aid
An Israeli health emergency expert explained to The Press Service of Israel that there is no limit to the amount of aid could be delivered to the Strip.
“The amount of food trucks is determined by the amount that the donors send,” Dr. Dorit Nitzan, director of Ben Gurion University’s master’s program in Emergency Medicine- Preparedness and Response, told TPS-IL. “The only thing that COGAT does is go through the items and don’t allow anything that has dual use.”
Nitzan, who also held senior positions at the World Health Organization for 17 years, stressed that the number of trucks entering the Strip “is determined entirely by the amount of donations provided for Gaza minus those that don’t pass the security check. Some 97% is allowed in, from the Israeli side.”
She added that the safety of the checkpoint can also be a factor, but more often than not, the greater danger is Hamas and associated criminal groups hijacking the trucks.
“The big obstacles are the access and utilization of food from the Gazan side,” Nitzan said.
Nitzan participated in a study by several Israeli institutions which concluded that Hamas posed the biggest threat to Gaza’s food security by hijacking food deliveries and firing rockets at border crossings where aid transfers take place.
When Hamas slashed food prices in April, Gaza residents told The Press Service of Israel that the problem wasn’t a lack of food but a shortage of money for families to purchase it.
At least 1,200 people were killed, and 252 Israelis and foreigners were taken hostage in Hamas’s attacks on Israeli communities near the Gaza border on October 7. Of the 97 remaining hostages, more than 30 have been declared dead. Hamas has also been holding captive two Israeli civilians since 2014 and 2015, and the bodies of two soldiers killed in 2014.
