Why it’s so hard to get humanitarian aid to Gazans

Trucks carrying humanitarian aid sit halted at Gaza’s Rafah border, and while aid agencies say much of Gaza is starving, many deliveries remain untouched. 

Jeremy Konyndyk, president of Refugees International, says that’s because organizations shipping aid into the region are at the mercy of Israeli authority. 

“Depending on the nature of that shipment, that can take anywhere from days to weeks to sometimes months to be approved,” he told As It Happens host Nil Köksal in June. 

“Just to bring a shipment from outside of Gaza … there is this thicket of challenges one after another that aid groups have to navigate.” 

Konyndyk says those challenges can include navigating the security situation at the border, as well as getting additional permissions required to move aid to distribution points. 

That’s particularly frustrating for people living there given that, in some parts of Gaza, getting to eat even one meal a day “is a privilege,” said Ghada Alhaddad, a media officer for Oxfam, another aid group working in the area.

“In north Gaza, many of my colleagues say they go for days without meals because they want to save what they have for the rest of the family — especially if they have children,” she said. 

In the nine months since Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel and killed about 1,200 people and abducted 250 others, 37,900 people in Gaza have been killed during retaliatory Israeli bombardments, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

A UN-backed report said 96 per cent of the population are facing profound levels of food insecurity, and Human Rights Watch says Israel is using starvation tactics as a weapon of warfare.

While aid can be delivered by sea and air, land delivery is the most common method. One route is through Rafah from Egypt, which has remained closed since Israel took control of the crossing in May. The other is over the Israeli crossing of Kerem Shalom, where the borders of Gaza, Israel and Egypt meet.

Both border crossings served the south of Gaza until the Erez crossing was reopened for the first time since October to bring additional aid to the…