April 24, 2024 - Israel-Hamas war

US military vessels are in the Mediterranean region and “standing by” and prepared to begin construction on the temporary pier off the coast of Gaza when given the order to do so, Pentagon spokesperson Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said Tuesday. 

He also said the United States was “positioned to begin construction very soon, in the near future.”

Officials are working through a checklist of processes and procedures, including security on the ground, coordination with partners supporting this effort and drawing up a timeline for implementation, Ryder said.

The World Food Programme will support the distribution of aid from the pier following weeks of diplomatic wrangling, the organization said Saturday.

The temporary pier, which will be several miles off Gaza's coast, will receive military and civilian vessels, Ryder said. The aid brought by those vessels will then be transported by US military vessels to the causeway, where non-military trucks — driven by non-profit organization personnel — will take the aid and then distribute it into Gaza.

Israel has consistently denied aid convoys to northern Gaza, according to the UN's agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA).

Food shortages are worst in northern Gaza, where Israel concentrated its military offensive in the early days of the war.

Israeli authorities vetoed at least 27 out of 81 aid missions that require coordination in the north and south of the strip, between April 1 and April 19, UNRWA said in a report. The last time UNRWA was able to deliver food supplies to the area was on January 23.

The Israeli agency in charge of inspecting convoys entering Gaza told CNN earlier this month that it was “cooperating [in the north] with a wide array of humanitarian organisations" including UN agencies and regional actors.

Since the beginning of April, an average of 186 aid trucks have crossed into Gaza per day via the Kerem Shalom and Rafah land crossings, UNRWA said.

As of April 8, UNRWA said it had delivered flour to nearly 400,000 families in southern Gaza. Before the war, about 500 trucks of supplies were entering the Palestinian enclave daily.

Barely trickling in: Human rights agencies have repeatedly warned that Israel's severe restrictions on aid entering Gaza means relief is barely trickling into the strip.

UNRWA says there “has been very little significant change in the volume of humanitarian supplies entering Gaza or improved access to the north."

Israeli agencies have frequently blamed the UN for failing to distribute aid within Gaza, saying last week that hundreds of trucks of aid piled up at Kerem Shalom. 

Young children wearing sandals pucker their faces under the Gazan sun. Others drift barefoot across the courtyard of a sprawling school in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza.

CNN footage shows clothes on washing lines and dusty plastic tents fluttering in the wind. 

Palestinians described months of forced displacement as they waited anxiously for news from relatives separated across the enclave, with no relief from Israeli strikes. 

Rahaf Shabbat, a young student who was forced to flee from Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza, told CNN she was heartbroken when the war disrupted her school year.

Another Palestinian child, Rama Shabat, says she has not seen her loved ones for seven months.

Hala Abdan, a lawyer, said her 20-year-old son’s left foot was amputated after he was injured by a drone strike in December.

“I struggle to provide him anything, just like all the Palestinian people,” she said. “It has been 200 days full of suffering that one can barely bear... 200 days of catastrophe.”