GAZA (Palestine Foundation Information Center) Only 12 UN trucks have distributed food and water in northern Gaza since October (2024), Oxfam reported Sunday, accusing Israel of systematic delays and obstruction of aid amid the worsening humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip.
The aid group highlighted an incident where shelters were shelled soon after delivering aid to them.
“Of the meager 34 trucks of food and water given permission to enter the North Gaza Governorate over the last 2.5 months, deliberate delays and systematic obstructions by the Israeli military meant that just 12 managed to distribute aid to starving Palestinian civilians,” Oxfam said in a press release.
“For three of these, once the food and water had been delivered to the school where people were sheltering, it was then cleared and shelled within hours.”
Israel’s restrictions on humanitarian aid for the North Gaza governorate have escalated since October (2024) when Israel started imposing a tight siege on the area.
North Gaza has been under an all-out siege since October 6, 2024 and people there have been ordered to evacuate. Despite evacuation orders, the Palestinians trying to go south have been targeted by Israeli snipers and drones.
“The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a set of standard tools that provides common global scales for classifying the severity and magnitude of food insecurity, has warned that there is a strong likelihood that famine is already occurring in the north and the risk of famine persists across the whole of Gaza,” Oxfam pointed out.
“The situation in Gaza is apocalyptic and people are trapped, unable to find any kind of safety. The absolute desperation of having no food or shelter for your family in the biting cold of winter,” Sally Abi-Khalil, Oxfam’s Middle East and North Africa Director, said.
“It is abhorrent that despite international law being so publicly violated by Israel and starvation being used relentlessly as a weapon of war, world leaders continue to do nothing,” Abi-Khalil added.
Oxfam has called for “an immediate, unconditional, and permanent ceasefire” and “an unhindered access for all lifesaving aid to the Gaza Strip, including the North Gaza Governorate.”
“Palestinians must be given the freedom to move home, rebuild, and live in peace and dignity, free of occupation or blockade,” it added.
Abi-Khalil warned that “every day that passes without a ceasefire is a death sentence for hundreds more civilians.”
