Checkpoints, looters, and warzones – the obstacles in the way of Gaza food parcels ...Middle East

Israel is under mounting international pressure to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza and curtail a bloody offensive as the UN warns that thousands of babies are at risk of starving to death.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has allowed a “basic amount of food” to enter the enclave to prevent a “starvation crisis” following pressure from allies over the total blockade that was imposed on 2 March.

Keir Starmer described the blockade as “intolerable and unacceptable” on Tuesday, while the European Commission announced a review of the EU-Israel association agreement.

But UN officials say that while a limited number of aid trucks have been given permission to enter, they remain stuck at the Kerem Shalom checkpoint between southern Israel and Gaza, and as of Wednesday afternoon, are yet to reach the famine-threatened population.

Even if Israel grants a green light for aid to resume at scale, the journeys required to bring lifesaving supplies to Gaza residents are hugely complicated and full of peril, according to aid workers familiar with the process.

Most of the aid packages for Gaza are assembled in Egypt by UN agencies such as the World Food Programme, the children’s agency UNICEF, and the Palestinian refugees’ agency UNRWA, which are funded by donor countries including the UK, EU, and the US.

Aid is then transported in trucks with a capacity of about 15 tonnes to Gaza entry points. But the routes changed with Israel’s incursion into the southern city of Rafah last May, forcing aid workers to uproot their operations from the city’s border with Egypt.

“We lost the whole system,” says Louise Wateridge, senior emergency officer at UNRWA, who has worked in and around Gaza during the war. “We lost our warehouses, all the logistics that we had down there were destroyed.”

Aid suppliers have been forced to run a gauntlet of Israeli anti-aid activists at Kerem Shalom who argue that allowing supplies into Gaza is undermining Israel’s war effort. A spokesperson for the group Order 9 said: “Instead of creating a truly effective war against weakened terrorists, we are strengthening them.”

Israeli right wing activists campaign against aid being allowed into Gaza at the Kerem Shalom crossing (Photo: Amir Cohen/Reuters)

Rejections and delays

Humanitarian networks then face difficulties passing Israeli security to enter Gaza. Trucks must unload their cargo for it to be subjected to inspections that can take hours or days and result in permission being denied for seemingly innocuous items, aid workers say.

Unicef communications chief, Tess Ingram, says “about a dozen” of the agency’s trucks are stuck at Kerem Shalom crossing. “So far, none of our trucks have been delivered to the people that need them, and that is now becoming urgent,” she said.

A CNN investigation found items including anaesthetics, oxygen cylinders, walter filtration systems, dates, sleeping bags, and maternity kits were among the items that were not allowed into Gaza. Israel said that some items were rejected as “dual use” for having potential military applications.

Wateridge said the banned list “changes on any given day” and lamented a lack of transparency. “There is a lot of waiting and then we are given either a clearance or rejection…There is not a lot of communication or answers about why.”

If and when a cargo has cleared inspections, humanitarians must coordinate with the Israeli military on when they can collect the aid and bring it to distribution centres. If there are military operations in the area, aid workers will face further delays.

More than 400 humanitarian workers have been killed during the war in Gaza, according to the UN, in what Ingram describes as “some of the most difficult and dangerous environments for humanitarians in the world”.

UN agencies and NGOs coordinate their movements with the Israeli military and use a deconfliction channel to safeguard their facilities and transport routes. But UN warehouses have been repeatedly bombed by the Israel Defence Force (IDF), and humanitarian workers killed on routes that the army had approved.

Ingram herself was part of a group that came under fire. “I was part of a convoy in April 2024 that was going from the south to the north of Gaza, and we were just south of the Wadi Gaza crossing, which is an Israeli checkpoint, and our vehicle was shot at multiple times,” she said. “Bullets hit the window and the door of the car where I was sitting.”

“In recent months, there have been (Israeli) strikes on aid guest houses, which should be deconflicted venues. They knew that we were there and its a UN location. It is clear that the deconfliction system is not being respected because these attacks on humanitarians continue.”

Israel has acknowledged deadly strikes on UN guest houses. A spokesperson for the military declined to comment on measures to protect aid staff safety.

Aid workers also report severe and unpredictable restrictions on their movement.

“I myself have spent more hours than I’d like to admit, sitting in convoys, waiting for clearance,” says Wateridge. “Eventually we have to go back and try again the next day.”

In some cases, colleagues sought Israeli permission to access sites in the aftermath of bombings to try to save survivors, but were only granted permission when it was too late, she added.

World Central Kitchen vehicle struck by the IDF in April 2024 (Photo: Abdel Kareem Hana/AP)

Mad Max territory 

UNRWA suspended transfers through the Kerem Shalom crossing in December after a “large convoy of aid trucks was stolen by armed gangs”.

The group’s deputy director, Scott Anderson, said last year that a three-kilometre stretch of road near the crossing had become “Mad Max territory” with drivers set upon by groups of criminals aiming to seize their valuable cargo.

The issue has become more serious in periods of scarcity, says Wateridge.

“There was an uptick of looting. It directly coincides with the amount of supplies coming in,” she said. “During the ceasefire (when more aid could enter), incidents of looting dwindled.

“Once you start putting restrictions on aid, and on the borders, if everything is coming through that area it makes it more of a target.”

Israel says it has restricted aid because a significant proportion is being stolen by Hamas, but the UN denies this, and Israel has not published evidence in support of its claims.

Aid distribution is often fraught due to the desperation of recipients, says Wateridge.

“We have had horrendous situations where people are so hungry and desperate…I remember there was a woman crushed to death outside a bakery waiting for a piece of bread because supplies are so low and everybody panicked. Everybody is terrified for themselves and for their families.

“If you’re a mother and you’re watching your child slowly be malnourished and in desperate need of food, you are going to try and do anything possible to get some food.”

The resumption of aid will come too late for some but humanitarian networks have the means and the plans to limit harm if they are allowed to, says Ingram.

“In terms of children with severe acute malnutrition – which is the most life threatening form of malnutrition – we know that those children are presenting to hospitals and what we call stabilisation centers, which is a specific nutrition treatment centre, and that they are the places that we need to bring our…ready to use therapeutic food that treats malnutrition,” she said.

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“Another example is with humanitarian cash assistance to the most vulnerable families. They might be families that have children with disabilities or multiple pregnant and breastfeeding women within the family. Those families we are aware of, and they’re our priority for getting assistance to,” Ingram added.

Supplies must be routed to areas of severe deprivation in northern Gaza, she noted, citing previous restriction on access to such areas, and criticising a controversial new Israel and US-backed scheme for concentrating distribution centres in the south.

Supplies are ready to go at scale, says Wateridge. “I have been in warehouses over the last couple of days that are full of enough supplies to feed 200,000 people for a month, and that is just UNRWA, you have the whole UN and all the NGOs with supplies sitting and waiting.

“If all of these supplies are allowed in it will diffuse the situation massively.”

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