Rafah, May 13: Aid workers are struggling to distribute dwindling food and other supplies to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced by what Israel says is a limited operation in Rafah, as the two main crossings near the southern Gaza city remain closed.
The United Nations’ agency for Palestinian refugees said 360,000 Palestinians have fled Rafah over the past week, out of 1.3 million who were sheltering there before the operation began, most of whom had already fled fighting elsewhere over the course of the 7-month war between Israel and Hamas. Israel has portrayed Rafah as the last stronghold of the militant group, brushing off warnings from the United States and other allies that any major operation there would be catastrophic for civilians.
Hamas has meanwhile regrouped in some of the most devastated parts of Gaza that Israel had previously claimed to have cleared with heavy bombardment and ground operations.
Thirty-eight trucks of flour arrived through the Western Erez Crossing, a second access point to northern Gaza, Abeer Etefa, a spokeswoman for the UN’s World Food Program, said Monday.
Israel had announced the opening of the crossing on Sunday. But no food has entered the two main crossings in southern Gaza for the past week. The Rafah crossing into Egypt has been closed since Israeli troops seized it a week ago.
Fighting in Rafah city has made it impossible for aid groups to access the nearby Kerem Shalom crossing with Israel, though Israel says it is allowing supply trucks to enter from its side.
For the past week, the Israeli military has intensified bombardment and other operations in Rafah, while ordering the population to evacuate from parts of the city. Israel insists it is a limited operation focused on rooting out tunnels and other militant infrastructure along the border with Egypt.
Israeli forces were also battling Palestinian militants in Zeitoun and the urban Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza, areas where the army had launched major operations earlier in the war. Etefa said WFP is distributing food from its remaining stocks in the areas of Khan Younis and Deir Balah further north to which many of those escaping Rafah have fled. Inside Rafah, only two organizations partnering with WFP were still able to distribute food, and no bakeries were operating in the city. “The situation is becoming increasingly unsustainable.” Almost the entire population of Gaza relies on humanitarian groups’ distribution of food and other supplies to survive. Amid Israeli restrictions and obstacles to aid distribution from violence, some 1.1 million Palestinians in Gaza face catastrophic levels of hunger, on the brink of starvation, and a “full-blown famine” is taking place in the north, according to the UN. (AP)
