The UN is reporting that its stores of food and tents have been completely emptied in parts of Gaza that serve the nearly the entire population of the Strip, as Israel ravages the region by inducing famine and displacing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.
As of Wednesday, UN officials say their warehouses are empty in areas south of Wadi Gaza, the major river that runs through the middle of Gaza, according to The Guardian. The warehouses belonging to The World Food Programme and UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in this region serve nearly 2 million Palestinians, out of 2.2 million total in Gaza.
Food and shelter are needed now more than ever in Gaza. The UNRWA reports that 600,000 people have fled Rafah in the last week, including many who have been displaced multiple times. Another 100,000 have been forced to evacuate in the north, where Israeli forces are intensely shelling. Famine has been spreading across Gaza for months, and Israel’s escalation of its already inhumane aid blockade will only make it far worse, humanitarian groups are warning.
“There are no tents in humanitarian warehouses. There are also no stocks of food left with World Food Programme or UNRWA south of the [river],” Georgios Petropoulos, who heads the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs for Gaza, told The Guardian. “What people have had distributed to them, or what remains on the market, is all that’s left, and we expect that that will be finished soon.”
“Time is running out to get a sustainable crossing open for predictable humanitarian supplies into southern Gaza,” Petropoulos said.
This appears to be a new step in Israel’s starvation campaign, one of near-total deprivation. Humanitarian organizations have been warning for months that the famine could end up being more deadly than the direct military attacks that have killed 35,000 people so far. Terrifyingly, it could be months or years until the true extent of the death toll caused by the famine is known since the official death count does not incorporate Israel’s killing by starvation.
Israel has closed or rendered inaccessible both major border crossings in southern Gaza. No supplies have entered through the Rafah crossing since Israeli forces took it over last week. The Rafah crossing was the primary entry point for humanitarian aid.
The Karem Abu Salem crossing in southern Gaza is also effectively useless for humanitarian groups because of intense fighting and Israeli forces’ presence in the area, UN representatives told The Guardian.
On Tuesday, officials said 54 trucks entered through the Erez crossing on the northern border of Gaza — but this falls far short of the 500 to 600 trucks that the UN says are needed on a daily basis in order to end the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
Further, UNRWA officials say that it is impossible to combat the famine while there is no water, sanitation or health care services across Gaza.
“We have had some successes in recent days in bringing aid to northern Gaza, which is where the situation was the most acute,” UNRWA director of planning Sam Rose told Al Jazeera English on Wednesday. “But we have seen those gains reversed completely in southern Gaza, which was already facing a situation of catastrophic food insecurity in terms of numbers, in terms of the pace of decline of the situation that has few parallels in modern history.”
“Unless we do something about it in the coming days, an already desperate situation will become far, far worse,” Rose said.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
Last week, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy