The amount of aid entering Gaza has fallen to its lowest level since Israel unleashed its brutal military campaign on the territory in October 2023 as Israel imposed a starvation blockade on northern Gaza.
According to the UN, only 703 truckloads of aid entered Gaza between October 1 and October 2022. The number marks a significant decline in the previous rate of aid entering the Strip. In September, just over 3,000 aid trucks were allowed into Gaza, which was already the lowest rate in any month of the past year.
The decline in aid deliveries has continued despite a letter that the US sent to Israel on October 14 that gave Israeli officials 30 days to ease the starvation blockade, a deadline that comes after the US presidential election. The letter called for Israel to allow 350 aid trucks into Gaza per day and said if the demands were not met there would be “implications” for US policy related to foreign assistance laws.
But the letter did not explicitly say the US would cut off military aid and the State Department has refused to say if there would be any consequences. Hala Rharrit, a former Arabic language spokeswoman for the State Department who resigned over US support for the slaughter in Gaza, said the letter was clearly a pre-election public relations ploy. Rharrit also noted the US was violating foreign assistance laws by providing military aid to Israel as its purposely preventing aid deliveries to starve Palestinians.
At the beginning of October, Israel ordered hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians to evacuate northern Gaza and cut off all aid deliveries into the area, following an outline for ethnic cleansing known as the “general’s plan.” Very few aid trucks have entered northern Gaza since then, but none have reached Jabalia and the towns around it, where the Israeli military has focused its military assault.
Joyce Msuya, the UN’s acting Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, recently warned that the “entire population of north Gaza is at risk of dying” due to the siege and Israeli military operations, which have targeted hospitals and buildings sheltering displaced Palestinians.
“What Israeli forces are doing in besieged north Gaza cannot be allowed to continue,” Msuya said. “Shelters have been emptied and burned down…families have been separated, and men and boys taken away by the truckload.”
