Principled aid delivery must resume at scale immediately to prevent further chaos in Gaza, warns ActionAid
Aid must be allowed to enter Gaza at scale and be distributed through the existing genuine, principled humanitarian system immediately, in order to prevent further scenes of chaos and stop famine in its tracks, ActionAid is warning.
We are horrified that, in recent days, starving Palestinians have been killed while trying to get the food they so desperately need, including in an incident on Tuesday when Israeli troops opened fire on a crowd of people gathered at a new aid distribution site in southern Gaza.
ActionAid and other humanitarian organisations have been warning for weeks that the controversial new aid distribution mechanism run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a new entity backed by the US and Israeli governments, is not fit for purpose and violates the key humanitarian principles of impartiality, neutrality and independence. It also risks being used as a tool for ethnic cleansing by necessitating the mass displacement of the population from the north to the south of Gaza.
It is now clear that this system is utterly inadequate, dehumanising by design and fundamentally incapable of delivering aid safely and effectively. It falls far short of meeting the urgent and staggering needs of 2.2 million people that have been deliberately starved for more than 11 weeks, while also exposing those attempting to access supplies to an unconscionable level of risk. Aid must never be militarised, and it must never be used as a weapon of war.
Amjad Al Shawa, director of the Palestinian NGOs Network (PNGO), an umbrella organisation of 30 Palestinian NGOs and a partner of ActionAid Palestine, highlighted some of the key issues with the scheme, saying: “This mechanism will have a kind of security check on [people accessing aid]. At the same time, they will distribute a very limited amount of food supplies, [ignoring people’s] basic needs.
“It will deprive the elders, women, children, people with disabilities, patients and injured people from receiving such supplies as they will have to walk for a few kilometres in order to get this aid in such an [unsecure] area, which is controlled by security companies and guarded by the Israeli occupation forces.
“The UN with its partners, the national and international organisations, have worked for 19 months [in Gaza], with their high commitment towards responding to the needs of the people, by humanitarian standards. We are taking supplies to the people themselves, not [bringing] people to an insecure, unsafe area with the humiliation of their basic rights.
"As humanitarians, we insist [and] order [for the] crossings [to be reopened] and [to] follow the original mechanism of [aid] distribution through the UN and its partners, the national and international organisations who are responding to the needs of people, as part of the rights.”
An effective, principled system of delivering aid to people in Gaza already exists: the world must demand it is resumed without delay. That means ending the outrageous and illegal blockade on Gaza, opening all border crossings and allowing aid -- including food, clean water, fuel, medicines and medical supplies -- to flow into the territory at scale.
Our local partners in Gaza are continuing to do everything they can to support people -- even as they themselves face repeated displacement and constant danger from the relentless bombing attacks.
A staff member at Wefaq Society for Women and Child Care, ActionAid’s partner in Gaza, explained the huge challenges they face in trying to source basic food for desperate families. He said: “Purchasing and securing vegetables is a difficult process. We do not have open crossings or any suppliers bringing [vegetables] into the Gaza Strip... we depend on local agriculture and the local market. The need is very, very high. A single family can go a week, two weeks, or a month, without having vegetables, or even the minimum amount of vegetables.
“Prices are changing every hour, not every day. The price fluctuations are frightening, when the price of one onion reaches more than 50 or 60 shekels [$14 or $16] and a tomato more than 23 or 24 shekels [$6.4 or $6.7].
‘If vegetables are available from the local producers – which unfortunately [are] not very good quality due to the lack of fertilizers and appropriate irrigation – the process of securing them and transporting them will be very difficult...[a] car needs to [be] secured, as well as fuel to move the car."
Aid is desperately needed, but aid alone cannot address the catastrophic humanitarian crisis in Gaza, where dozens of people are being killed and injured every day in the Israeli military’s relentless attacks, essential infrastructure is being flattened, and the population is being forcibly displaced into an ever-smaller area of land. The war must end, now. States must do everything in their power to bring about a permanent ceasefire immediately -- including by halting all arms sales to the Israeli government and imposing sanctions on senior officials responsible for breaches of international humanitarian law.
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Spokespeople are available for interview. Please contact the press office at uk.media@actionaid.org or on +44 7753 973 486 to arrange.