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<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora-barrows-friedman/israel-insists-there-no-hunger-humanitarian-crisis-gaza">electronicintifada.net</a>
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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Israel insists there is no hunger, humanitarian crisis in Gaza</h1>
<p class="gmail-node__submitted">
<span class="gmail-field gmail-field-author"><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/people/nora-barrows-friedman">Nora Barrows-Friedman</a></span>
<span class="gmail-field gmail-field-blog"><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blog/rights-and-accountability">Rights and Accountability</a></span>
<span class="gmail-field gmail-field-publication-date"><span class="gmail-date-display-single">19 January 2024</span></span> </p>
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<img src="https://electronicintifada.net/sites/default/files/styles/original_800w/public/2024-01/241223_rafah_bt_009.jpg?itok=hExM5loQ×tamp=1705614804" width="391" height="280" alt="People stand behind a short wall, holding containers to collect food" title="" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" style="margin-right: 25px;">
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<p>Palestinians wait to collect food in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, 24 December 2023. </p><small>
<span>APA images</span></small>
<p>Israel has denied access to more than 75 percent of planned
humanitarian aid and supply missions into Gaza, according to the United
Nations.</p>
<p>Only seven of the 29 missions – 24 percent – have been accomplished,
either fully or partially, during the first two weeks of January, <a href="https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-95">reported</a> the
UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) on Wednesday.</p>
<p>OCHA added that two additional aid assignments were left incomplete
due to “the non-viability of allocated routes” and “excessive delays” at
checkpoints.</p>
<p>Approximately 95 percent of missions that involve the distribution of
fuel to water facilities and medicine to health centers in the northern
half of Gaza “have been denied access by Israeli authorities,” the UN <a href="https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-93">says</a>.</p>
<p>The lack of fuel “for water, sanitation and hygiene increases risks
of health and environmental hazards,” OCHA reported, whereas a lack of
medicine has “debilitated the functionality of the six
partially-functioning hospitals” in the north.</p>
<p>Israel’s current prevention of humanitarian aid missions to the
northern areas of Gaza “mark a spike” compared with previous months, the
UN warned.</p>
<p>At the same time, only 98 truckloads of food, medicine and other aid
entered the Gaza Strip on Wednesday through the Rafah crossing in the
south and the Kerem Shalom (Karem Abu Salem) commercial crossing at the
southeastern boundary with Israel, the UN added.</p>
<p>Before 7 October, an average of 500 trucks <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/gaza-tortured-israel-and-us-not-failed-world">entered</a> Gaza each day.</p>
<p>That number of trucks was the bare minimum needed for Palestinians
struggling to survive under the strict blockade Israel has imposed on
the coastal enclave since 2007.</p>
<p><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/genocide-gaza-stretches-past-100-days">Last week</a>, directors of the World Food Program, the World Health Organization and the UN children’s fund UNICEF <a href="https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/preventing-famine-and-deadly-disease-outbreaks-gaza-requires-faster-safer-aid-access">said</a>
in a joint statement that “a fundamental step change in the flow of
humanitarian aid into Gaza is urgently needed” as the “risk of famine
grows and more people are exposed to deadly disease outbreaks.”</p>
<p>Philippe Lazzarini, the director of the UN agency for Palestine refugees, <a href="https://www.unrwa.org/newsroom/official-statements/gaza-strip-100-days-death-destruction-and-displacement">stated</a>
on 13 January that “the crisis in Gaza is a man-made disaster
compounded by dehumanizing language and the use of food, water and fuel
as instruments of war.”</p>
<p>“The humanitarian operation has fast become one of the most complex
and challenging in the world; largely due to cumbersome procedures for
the entry of aid into the Gaza Strip and a myriad of obstacles to the
safe and orderly distribution of aid, including ongoing hostilities,”
Lazzarini said.</p>
<p>After a three-day visit to Gaza, UNICEF’s deputy executive director Ted Chaiban <a href="https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/statement-unicef-deputy-executive-director-ted-chaiban-upon-conclusion-his-visit">said</a> on Thursday that “the situation has gone from catastrophic to near collapse.”</p>
<p>Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living in the northern Gaza
Strip lack access to clean water and food, he said, and not a single
UNICEF convoy has been allowed to reach the area in January.</p>
<p>Chaiban called for an end to the “intense bombardment” – though he
did not name Israel as the aggressor – and said it was “imperative that
access restrictions are lifted.”</p>
<p>“We are trying to drip assistance through a straw to meet an ocean of need,” he said.</p>
<p>UNICEF, he added, “has described the Gaza Strip as the most dangerous
place in the world to be a child. We have said this is a war on
children. But these truths do not seem to be getting through.”
</p>
<h2>Israeli deception</h2>
<p>Meanwhile, <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/cogat">COGAT</a>, Israel’s bureaucratic arm of the military occupation, <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/israel-delivers-its-vows-bring-hell-gaza">continues to insist</a> that there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and that it has imposed no limits on aid.
</p>
“To the best of my understanding, and according to all the analyses we
have conducted, there is no hunger in Gaza, and for sure the population
is not being starved,” a COGAT official, named as Col. A, recently told
the Tel Aviv newspaper <em><a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-01-12/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/half-a-million-gazans-are-suffering-from-acute-hunger-let-that-sink-in/0000018c-fd57-d517-af9d-fd7f19b10000">Haaretz</a></em>.
<p>The colonel, who boasted that they have not “read an in-depth UN
report about hunger,” cited racist notions of Arabs for why they are
running out of food.</p>
<p>“Don’t forget that this is an Arab, Gazan population whose DNA is to
hoard, certainly when it comes to food,” the COGAT official said.</p>
<p>COGAT is led by Ghassan Alian, who <a href="https://twitter.com/cogatonline/status/1711718883323752586">described</a> Palestinians on 10 October as “human beasts.”</p>
<p>The agency has been Israel’s <a href="https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/what-will-the-international-court-of-justice-order-on-genocide-in-gaza">primary source</a> at the International Court of Justice in its attempts to assert its humanitarianism toward Palestinians.</p>
<p><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/miki-zohar">Miki Zohar</a>,
Israel’s minister of culture and sports, admitted that supplies are
being prevented from reaching Palestinians in the north. “The supplies
don’t reach there, and rightly so,” he told <em>Haaretz</em>.
</p>
This week, officials from France and Qatar announced that they had
brokered a deal with Israel and Hamas leadership “to deliver medicine to
Israeli hostages in Gaza, as well as additional aid to Palestinians,”
the Associated Press <a href="https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-news-01-16-2024-d27350609d337dc417e9d7861be3de74">reported</a>.
<p>Medicine for 45 Israeli captives with chronic illnesses <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/aid-israeli-hostages-palestinian-civilians-arrives-gaza-border-2024-01-17/">arrived</a> at the Rafah crossing on Wednesday.</p>
<p>Dr. Ashraf al-Qedra, spokesperson for the Palestinian health ministry in Gaza, <a href="https://t.me/MOHMediaGaza/4788">stated</a> this week that 350,000 chronically ill Palestinian patients are without their medication across the Gaza Strip.</p>
<p>He called on international institutions to provide medications for them immediately.</p>
<p>“The Israeli occupation still controls the volume, quality and course
of medical aid with the aim of keeping the health sector in a state of
continuous collapse,” al-Qedra <a href="https://t.me/MOHMediaGaza/4800">stated</a> on Thursday.</p>
<p>After cataloging the medical aid that has entered the Gaza Strip,
al-Qedra explained that “what can be used, unfortunately, is less than
30 percent. This means that the largest amount of aid does not meet our
required needs.”</p><br>
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