Sharon Zhang
Truthout / January 9, 2025
“There is now a perception that it is dangerous to protect aid convoys but safe to loot them,” one UN official said.
For the past three months, Israeli forces have blocked or allowed the interruption of every aid mission attempted by the UN into north Gaza, as officials warn that famine may be ongoing in the region and Palestinians languish without water and other basic needs.
The UN reported Wednesday that it attempted to reach northern Gaza 165 times between October 6 and December 31. Of those missions, it said, 149 were blocked by Israeli authorities and 16 were impeded, meaning aid was only partially delivered or not delivered at all.
This means that the estimated 65,000 to 75,000 Palestinians still in north Gaza are largely without access to food, water, electricity, and even basic health care, after the Israeli military forced the last three hospitals left in the region to close over the past two weeks.
The official death toll, as reported by Gaza health authorities, surpassed 46,000 people on Wednesday. But the official death tally relies on reports by health care facilities, and without hospitals in north Gaza, many deaths are likely going uncounted entirely. With Israel’s targeting of journalists across Gaza and the relentless nature of Israeli bombings and massacres, there are likely many attacks going unreported as well.
Israel’s aid blockade has created a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza over the past 15 months. International food experts have said that famine is imminent — if not already ongoing — in northern Gaza. Conditions in the region are apocalyptic, human rights officials have said, as Israel executes its plan of ethnic cleansing in the region.
Supplies for basic survival like cold weather clothes and blankets are scarce, for instance, as Israeli forces block the vast majority of winter supplies from entering Gaza, causing babies to freeze to death. According to the UN, in the past month, Israel has only allowed 19,000 children’s winter clothing kits to be distributed to people in need, out of 220,000 kits procured by rights groups.
The aid blockade is only worsening. UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Tom Fletcher said on Monday that the entire aid operation across Gaza is at a “breaking point,” after Israeli forces opened fire on a World Food Programme convoy on Sunday.
The collapse of the aid operation is due in large part to Israeli forces allowing looting gangs to seize most aid convoys entering the Strip in recent months, reports have found. Meanwhile, Israeli forces have killed at least 369 aid workers in Gaza since the beginning of the genocide.
“There is no meaningful civil order. Israeli forces are unable or unwilling to ensure the safety of our convoys. Statements by Israeli authorities vilify our aid workers even as the military attacks them. Community volunteers who accompany our convoys are being targeted,” Fletcher said.
“There is now a perception that it is dangerous to protect aid convoys but safe to loot them,” he went on.
Sharon Zhang is a news writer at Truthout covering politics, climate and labour
