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Humanitarian groups have accumulated tens of thousands of trucks’ worth of aid that are in “limbo,” sitting in warehouses awaiting approval for entry into Gaza that may never come, Oxfam said on Thursday — as Israel runs a propaganda campaign attempting to blame its starvation plan on the very aid groups to whom it’s denying access.
According to Oxfam, international humanitarian agencies have 420,000 pallets of aid ready to assist Palestinians in Gaza. This is enough pallets to cover 101 football fields, or about 185 acres of land, the group said.
The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) alone has 6,000 trucks loaded and ready for entry, waiting in Jordan and Egypt for Israeli approval.
These trucks and pallets contain crucial, lifesaving materials, including food, water and sanitation equipment, and medicine.
Israel, and only Israel — which controls all entry of commercial and humanitarian supplies into Gaza — is blocking the entry of this aid.
Since March, Israel has maintained a near-total aid blockade on Gaza. Now, health officials and aid workers have reported a sharp upturn in starvation deaths, with community kitchens having been shuttered for months and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians going days without eating. Meanwhile, preventable diseases are “ripping” through Gaza, Oxfam says, with an increase in preventable diseases like acute watery diarrhea in recent months.
But, with increasing scrutiny on Israel’s near-daily massacres of aid seekers related to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) scheme, Israel is now bizarrely trying to blame its humanitarian catastrophe on aid groups.
This week, GHF put out a statement pointing out that hundreds of aid distribution sites run by UN and partner agencies are closed — presenting this, somehow, as evidence that the UN is responsible for starving Palestinians. The Israeli military has also been releasing supposed footage of aid sitting in Gaza that it claims UN groups are choosing not to distribute.
The reality of Israel’s aid blockade contradicts this narrative in every way. In fact, Israel takes steps to block aid from reaching Palestinians at each step of aid entry and distribution.
Israel has repeatedly attacked aid convoys and empowered looting gangs to ensure that supplies can’t reach Palestinians. The few aid trucks that are allowed into Gaza face obstruction after obstruction by Israeli forces, while Israeli soldiers also open fire on Palestinians who gather around trucks in hopes of getting aid.
The blockade is so restrictive, in fact, that the UN’s humanitarian agency has reported that Israel isn’t even allowing the UN to approach truckloads of aid waiting around Gaza’s border to verify the amount that is there — much less to take control of and distribute the aid.
Far from being concerned about the humanitarian catastrophe, Israel has been actively threatening and obstructing journalists and aid groups who report on famine conditions — conditions meticulously manufactured by Israeli authorities over the course of their genocide. This week, over 100 groups, including top aid groups in Gaza, put out a plea for access that Israel has summarily ignored.
Meanwhile, Israeli ministers have outright boasted about blocking aid to Palestinians, leaving little question over who is carrying out the slaughter as U.S. and Israeli officials collaborate on their plan for the total forcible removal of Palestinians from Gaza.
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