Residents of Gaza lack water and food. The UN continues to be denied humanitarian access in the Gaza Strip Humanitarian aid
UN-coordinated food convoys are three times more likely to be denied access to northern Gaza than other aid convoys, the UN Office of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said on Tuesday. However, the Israeli authorities did not explain the official reasons for this policy.
“They very often refuse [access], and that’s it, that’s where it ends. We are not receiving any explanations,” OCHA spokesman Jens Laerke said at a briefing by UN humanitarian agencies in Geneva.
In a widely reported telephone conversation between US President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have pledged to reopen the Erez border crossing into the northern Gaza Strip and to facilitate the delivery of aid through the nearby port of Ashdod.
The White House said that it will closely monitor what is happening, but Israel has not given a date for the opening of the crossing, and the increase in the number of routes to the Gaza Strip has reportedly not yet occurred.
As confirmed by Laerke, responding When asked about additional corridors for the delivery of humanitarian aid, in particular the Erez crossing, as of Monday evening, OCHA had not received any information about the opening of the checkpoint.
In March, more than half of UN food missions to high-risk areas requiring coordination with Israeli authorities were either not authorized or encountered obstacles.
Access to northern Gaza
Laerke also said getting aid inside Gaza “is another challenge.”
“Food convoys that must go, in particular, to the north of the sector, where 70 percent of the people suffer from hunger, are more likely – in fact three times more likely than any another humanitarian convoy with other types of goods is being denied passage,” he said. security.
“But we also emphasize that the obligation of the warring parties – and in particular, I would say, Israel as the occupying power of Gaza – is to facilitate delivery and ensure that so that humanitarian aid is not delayed at the border,” he said.