A top United Nations humanitarian official said it is clear Israel is working to ramp up humanitarian aid into Gaza, but that Israel has not yet implemented all of the measures it has announced.
“We've been asking for this for months,” said Jamie McGoldrick, the UN’s humanitarian coordinator in Jerusalem. “We’ve been calling out the fact, there's real humanitarian crisis in the North, where famine is imminent… it's only now that we start to see the announcements, but not see the actual implementation as of yet.”
Israel's plan for more aid: The Israeli Defense Forces announced Thursday they would be building a land crossing between Israel and northern Gaza after, on Wednesday, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant promised his country would "flood Gaza with aid" deliveries.
COGAT, the Israeli agency that coordinates the inspection and delivery of humanitarian assistance for Gaza, said the daily number of trucks entering Gaza has doubled from last week’s numbers, but UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian affairs which tracks the flow of aid into Gaza, has not reported a similar increase.
The UN’s humanitarian coordinator has welcomed the new announcements by the Israeli government but says more needs to be done to facilitate operations inside Gaza.
“We get lots of trucks coming from Israel, we can’t automatically put those trucks straight into Gaza, they have to be taken off or they have to be segregated from water, from food, from medical items, they then get loaded onto trucks, and then they then go out into Gaza,” McGoldrick explained. “Getting 400 trucks from Kerem Shalom doesn't mean 400 trucks go into Gaza.”
McGoldrick said the logistical complications are numerous, and take time to resolve. He also said Israel’s restrictions on movement inside the strip complicate matters.