Nora Barrows-Friedman
The Electronic Intifada / August 31, 2024
Gauze, diapers and antibiotics.
Kitchen utensils, baby formula, fresh vegetables and shampoo.
These basic supplies are included among a long list of items that Israel has restricted entry into Gaza for months, as diseases and hunger soar across the coastal enclave.
Historically, such items and similar essentials have been banned or restricted entry into Gaza during Israel’s 17-year-long siege.
But humanitarian aid agencies are warning that nearly 11 months into Israel’s genocidal attacks, Palestinians in Gaza are at a breaking point.
In August, Israel almost doubled its previous rate of denials of entry to humanitarian aid missions, compared with July, according to the United Nations.
Aid groups say that approximately 1,600 trucks full of essential medicines, health and hygiene supplies and food are currently stuck at crossing points along the Gaza boundary with “no progress” on their movement.
Israel’s repeated and incessant displacement orders, which are pushing Palestinians into an ever-shrinking corner of Gaza, have also impacted storage warehouses for humanitarian aid, the organizations say.
“Numerous warehouses, including four UN and one HI [Handicap International] warehouse, have reported that their locations are no longer within the ‘humanitarian zone,’ leaving them with no space to store supplies being shipped into Gaza,” the groups state.
Additionally, the severe damage to key infrastructure including roads, water and sanitation – along with the risks of unexploded ordnance – have impeded or prevented deliveries of humanitarian aid altogether.
On Friday, more than two dozen international aid organizations warned of an “imminent collapse of the humanitarian response in Gaza, which would leave millions of civilians without aid.”
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières reported on 27 August that for three months, the organization’s Gaza team has been trying to import 4,000 hygiene kits containing “basic everyday items such as soap, toothbrushes, shampoo and laundry powder,” adding that the scarcity of such essentials have made them prohibitively expensive for people in Gaza to buy.
“For three months, importation of these kits has been blocked by the Israeli authorities,” the medical group stated.
In mid-August, Gaza’s government media office held a press conference marking the 100th consecutive day of Israel’s closure and destruction of the Rafah crossing.
The office estimated that more than 1,000 children, patients and injured people have been killed as a direct result of the crossing’s closure and the consequential lack of access to live-saving medical care or humanitarian teams who can deliver necessary food, medicine and supplies.
Starvation as a weapon
Israel’s restrictions on food deliveries into Gaza, amid its expanding displacement orders, are accelerating its policy of engineered starvation as collective punishment.
The Gaza government media office stated on 20 August that Israel and its US counterparts “are explicitly using the policy of starvation and food denial against civilians in the Gaza Strip as a means of political pressure, and this constitutes a war crime and a crime against humanity.”
With the closure of the Rafah crossing at the Egyptian border since 7 May, Israel “is exacerbating the humanitarian catastrophe in an unprecedented manner” with “the green light of the United States,” the media office noted.
Delays at the few open crossings have impacted the entry of fresh food into Gaza. Aid groups say that vegetables “continue to be denied entry at key crossings such as Zikim and meat on cold chain trucks continues to remain held up pending approval.”
Hanady Muhiar from the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker organization, stated that due to Israel’s forced displacement orders, its staff had to repeatedly suspend water distribution operations.
“Palestinians in Gaza are under constant bombardment from Israeli air strikes and lack of access to food, water and lifesaving medical supplies,” Muhiar said.
The World Food Programme warned this week that it has had to “reduce the contents of food parcels in Gaza as inflows of aid dipped and supplies dwindled” over the last two months.
The agency added that approximately half of the required food assistance entered Gaza in July, and that “August is set to end with a similar result.”
WFP said that when the rainy season starts, roads that are already damaged by the war “will become unusable” when rain and floods are expected.
“Alongside the desperate needs of today, we must think about what’s coming,” stated WFP’s Antoine Renard.
“We won’t be able to bring food to the people of Gaza unless urgent repairs are done on these roads. We must be able to bring in the heavy machinery that is needed and work with communities so we have the labor to fix the roads before the rain comes.”
Meanwhile, Israel continues to attack and target UN convoys inside Gaza.
On 28 August, Israeli forces opened fire at a clearly-marked World Food Programme vehicle, which was part of a convoy whose movements had been fully coordinated with the Israel army.
UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said that the vehicle was struck 10 times and that no response was received from the Israeli military when it was questioned over the attack.
Polio vaccinations amid uncertainty
The Palestinian health ministry in Gaza, along with several United Nations agencies, is preparing to begin a mass vaccination campaign against the polio virus, which was detected in June and confirmed in Gaza in July.
The highly contagious disease mainly affects young children and serious cases can lead to permanent paralysis and death.
A 10-month-old child in a displacement camp in Deir al-Balah was the first confirmed case of the type 2 polio virus, the first in 25 years in Gaza.
The baby is already partially paralyzed.
Beginning on 1 September, health agencies will attempt to administer the first of a two-round series of oral vaccines in central Gaza, where more than half of the entire population is now concentrated.
Vaccine campaigns will then begin across areas in southern Gaza and northern Gaza.
More than 1.2 million doses of an oral polio vaccine have been delivered to Gaza, with 400,000 additional doses scheduled to arrive.
Rik Peeperkorn, a representative of the World Health Organization, stated that nearly 400 sites across Gaza will be open for parents or caregivers to bring their children to receive the vaccine over the next several weeks.
COGAT, the bureaucratic arm of Israel’s military occupation, claimed that the vaccination campaigns will be coordinated with eight-hour “pauses” in attacks.
But medical experts are deeply concerned that these “pauses,” if they even materialize, won’t make a dent in the overall health of Palestinians, especially children, without an immediate and full end to Israel’s genocidal attacks.
Reuters acknowledged that “the pauses in fighting will not cover the entirety of each zone” specified for vaccination sites.
According to a map seen by the news agency – sourced from COGAT – “the pause will take place in a smaller area within each zone.”
The plans for sporadic “pauses” – sandwiched between routine, daily massacres and widespread destruction – are “a bare minimum. And it isn’t a pause,” Dorotea Gucciardo of the Glia Project, a medical organization, told The Electronic Intifada.
Gucciardo explained that “It’s no strikes in areas where the vaccine will be rolled out within specific hours. Basically it’s asking Israel to respect international law by not attacking health care, healthcare sectors or people seeking healthcare.”
Gucciardo worked in Gaza earlier this year.
“Meanwhile, this genocide continues,” she said.
“And the kids we are trying to prevent getting this devastating disease are still at high risk of getting killed, maimed, losing family members, losing loved ones, their communities – and if they survive, they have to deal with the mental trauma of never-ending violence over the last 11 months of genocide.”
Nora Barrows-Friedman is a staff writer and associate editor at The Electronic Intifada, and is the author of In Our Power: US Students Organize for Justice in Palestine (Just World Books, 2014)
