Existing supplies of basic necessities have been running dangerously low and on Wednesday the UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF, said that its nutrition stocks to prevent increasing malnutrition “are almost gone”.
“Humanitarian assistance is being weaponised to serve and support political and military objectives,” said Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA.
Speaking at the European Humanitarian Forum, Mr. Lazzarini insisted that significant stocks of aid remain blocked at the enclave’s borders.
“UNRWA is a lifeline for people in face of immense needs,” he said, noting that the whole humanitarian community in Gaza remains ready to scale up the delivery of critical supplies and services.
The development comes a day after UN humanitarians said that they had been allowed to send “around 100” more aid trucks loaded with supplies into Gaza.
Too little, too late
While such a move would be welcome in light of the desperate humanitarian emergency created by Israel’s total blockade, relief teams have pointed out that this would be a fraction of the 500 trucks that entered the enclave every day before the war erupted in Gaza in October 2023.
Today, one in five Gazans faces starvation, according to respected food security experts from the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification platform – or IPC.
UN agencies have repeatedly stressed that they have stockpiles of relief supplies ready to enter Gaza.
Economic ‘paralysis’
Inside Gaza, the daily struggle to find food and water continues because of the Israeli blockade of all commercial and humanitarian access.
According to the UN World Food Programme (WFP), markets are “severely paralyzed”, supply chains have collapsed and prices have spiked.
“The population is now facing extreme levels of poor dietary diversity, with most people unable to access even the most basic food groups,” the UN agency warned in its latest update on Gaza.
“Several essential food items, including eggs and frozen meat, have disappeared from the market,” it said. “Wheat flour has reached exorbitant prices, with increases of over 3,000 per cent compared to pre-conflict levels and more than 4,000 per cent” compared to the ceasefire period from January to March.
While the Gazan economy is now in “near-total paralysis”, the West Bank is also staring down a deep recession, with combined overall output shrunk by 27 per cent.
Given that this is the deepest contraction in the Occupied Palestinian Territory in over a generation, WFP cited projections that Gaza will require 13 years to recover to pre-crisis levels and the West Bank three years.
West Bank demolitions crisis
In the occupied West Bank, meanwhile, further demolitions of Palestinian buildings were reported on Monday and Tuesday, in Beit Sahur, Shu’fat and Nahhalin.
Since the start of the year, Israeli settlers have damaged water infrastructure in the West Bank more than 60 times, according to OCHA. It noted that herding communities have been impacted most severely.
