Gaza’s First Sea Shipment from Cyprus: A Start of an Untested Mediterranean Corridor to Bring Aid to the Palestinians
The first sea shipment of food for Gaza left the Mediterranean island of Cyprus on Tuesday morning, officials said, the start of an untested maritime corridor to bring aid to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians whom the United Nations says are on the brink of starvation.
The United Nations food agency said that people in the north of Gaza are on the verge of famine.
Aid groups say that too little aid is getting into Gaza by land. That is prompting multinational efforts to deliver food and necessities by sea and air. The United States, Britain, the European Union and other governments said last week that they would establish a maritime corridor to bring aid to Gaza from Cyprus, and the U.S. military has announced plans to build a floating pier to facilitate the deliveries because Gaza does not have a functioning port.
The Israeli military said that it had allowed six trucks carrying supplies from the United Nations World Food Program to enter the northern Gaza Strip on Tuesday, not far from the Israeli village of Be’eri, where more people were killed in the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack than in any other community. The World Food Program had its first delivery in over a month to the northern part of the enclave.
Ms. von der Leyen stated that the first sea shipment would be a pilot project and that others would follow soon.
In a separate mission, a humanitarian ship is pulling a barge loaded with food for Gaza, which is expected to arrive this week. World Central Kitchen, a charity that helps out with food in disasters, is constructing a jetty and putting food onto trucks for delivery.
The usual sailing time between Cyprus and Gaza is 15 to 17 hours, officials and aid groups said, but they added that the Open Arms was likely to take longer because of its heavy load.
World Central Kitchen (WCIA): Mission, Continuum Operations, and Gaza Assistance from a Large Gazan Convoy with the United Arab Emirates
The group said the ship was carrying rice, flour, lentils, dry beans, canned tuna, canned beef and canned chicken. The United Arab Emirates was providing financing and logistical support for the operation, Mr. Andrés said.
Since October, organizers and Palestinian cooks working with World Central Kitchen have served more than 34 million meals in Gaza, according to the group. The organization has established 65 community kitchens in the territory, which are managed by Palestinians, and has plans for at least 35 more, Mr. Andrés said. About 350,000 meals are being served every day, but Mr. Andrés said he would like to distribute more than a million meals a day.
The aid from the northern convoy was given close to the fence because of the danger of crowds jumping on trucks to get supplies. The convoy had one truck full of flour and five others carrying food. She said the delivery came after six days of intensive negotiations.
“The significance of this is that it revives the hope of continued access to northern Gaza over land,” Ms. Etefa said. “It’s a good step, but we just hope that it doesn’t end up being a one-off.”
The Times of Gaza’s Crisis in Light of the U.N. Security Council Report on Borrell’s Comments on Hamas’ Attack on Gaza
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Speaking to the U.N. Security Council in New York on Tuesday, Josep Borrell, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, said the humanitarian crisis is “man-made, and when we look for alternative ways of providing support by sea, by air, we have to remind that we have to do it because the natural way of providing support through roads is being closed.”
“Starvation is being used as a war arm and when we condemned this happening in Ukraine, we have to use the same words for what is happening in Gaza,” Borrell said.
In order to retaliate for the attack on the country by Hamas, Israel launched its air, sea and ground offensive. The north has been largely cut off since. But the U.N. estimates up to 300,000 people remain there under some of the worst conditions in Gaza, with little to no access to food and water and barely functioning hospitals.
The family of Abed Amin, a 35-year-old who lives in Gaza City, has not received any help since the beginning of the war over five months ago. Sometimes he borrows money from his friends to buy canned mushrooms or olives at a steep price on the black market. They grind animal feed to a type of flour.
Taghreed is a mother with four daughters in northern Gaza and says that before the war she spoiled her children. She has had to teach her daughters how to survive on one loaf of bread a day.
An air drop landed on the roof of her home. The guy rushed up and found some boxes of food. She looked and saw a large crowd behind her, many of them holding knives, and some of them were even armed.
“What we need to do is flood the north with food so it doesn’t become a very prized commodity. If people in the north could see the fact that on a daily basis there was regular supplies of trucks of food, medicine and other key commodities, I think the desperation would not be there. McGoldrick said that there wouldn’t be any insecurity.
“Why are we relying on feeding over 1.5 million displaced people through one gate, when you have disruptions to that gate because of demonstrations that block it for days?” says McGoldrick. He says Israel should open the Ashdod border crossing into northern Gaza.
Aid trucks to Gaza have also been stalled by Israeli protesters, who want nothing to go in until Hamas releases hostages taken from Israel during the Oct. 7 attack.
“The fact that they’ve had to do airdrops shows that we are succeeding,” said Debby Sharon, one of the organizers for the protest at Nitzana crossing on the Egypt-Israel border, where all the trucks heading to Gaza stop for Israeli inspection. trucks from getting inspected were prevented from getting inspected due to the sit-in.
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Friedman believes that aid organizations have not had enough manpower to deal with the demand for aid, which leads to distribution and flow problems.
But the Association of International Development Agencies, whose members include dozens of nongovernmental aid groups operating in the region, says Israel’s Welfare Ministry stopped renewing visas for humanitarian workers in early February.
Miriam Marmur, the director of public advocacy at Gisha, an Israeli nonprofit organization that monitors the rights of Palestinians with a focus on Gaza, says there are several factors in current Israeli policy that directly affect the flow of aid.
“Before Oct. 7, the aid agencies that were active in the area were only sourcing goods through Israel. The adjustment of having to purchase all of their goods in Egypt or import goods that they need has been a hinderance and is impacting aid operations.
Israel imposes a fuel cap, which affects every aspect of humanitarian operation, including communication, because of the electrical power failure.
They should allow the humanitarians unfettered access. McGoldrick claims that that’s not happening enough or we have a lot of deconfliction issues. “We have many issues that have been notified in advance. At the same time, we get blocked or we get diverted or maintained. Some trucks have been hit by military fire.
The UN’s humanitarian coordination sub-office in Gaza has been described by the head of the office as “profoundly grotesque”.
“I could see civil defense vehicles annihilated. I saw ambulances cut in half by machine gun fire. I saw primary health care centers shut up, at the same time that you have a war of such acute aggression and violence in such a contained area,” Petropoulos says.