Destruction, Lawlessness and Red Tape Hobble Gaza Aid

FILE PHOTO: Trucks are parked at the Nitzana Crossing, in Nitzana, Israel, January 30, 2024. REUTERS/Alexandre Meneghini/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: Trucks are parked at the Nitzana Crossing, in Nitzana, Israel, January 30, 2024. REUTERS/Alexandre Meneghini/File Photo
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Destruction, Lawlessness and Red Tape Hobble Gaza Aid

FILE PHOTO: Trucks are parked at the Nitzana Crossing, in Nitzana, Israel, January 30, 2024. REUTERS/Alexandre Meneghini/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: Trucks are parked at the Nitzana Crossing, in Nitzana, Israel, January 30, 2024. REUTERS/Alexandre Meneghini/File Photo

In mid-March, a line of trucks stretched for 3 kilometers along a desert road near a crossing point from Israel into the Gaza Strip. On the same day, another line of trucks, some 1.5 kilometers long, sometimes two or three across, was backed up near a crossing from Egypt into Gaza.

The trucks were filled with aid, much of it food, for the more than 2 million Palestinians in the war-ravaged enclave. About 50 kilometers from Gaza, more aid trucks – some 2,400 in total – were sitting idle this month in the Egyptian city of Al Arish, according to an Egyptian Red Crescent official.

These motionless food-filled trucks, the main lifeline for Gazans, are at the heart of the escalating humanitarian crisis gripping the enclave. More than five months into Israel’s war with Hamas, a report by a global authority on food security has warned that famine is imminent in parts of Gaza, as more than three-quarters of the population have been forced from their homes and swathes of the territory are in ruins.

Galvanized by reports and images of starving children, the international community, led by the United States, has been pressuring Israel to facilitate the transfer of more aid into Gaza. Washington has airdropped food into the Mediterranean enclave and recently announced it would build a pier off the Gaza coast to help ferry in more aid.

UN officials have accused Israel of blocking humanitarian supplies to Gaza. The European Union’s foreign policy chief alleged Israel was using starvation as a “weapon of war.” And aid agency officials say Israeli red tape is slowing the flow of trucks carrying food supplies.

Israeli officials reject these accusations and say they have increased aid access to Gaza. Israel isn’t responsible for delays in aid getting into Gaza, they say, and the delivery of aid once inside the territory is the responsibility of the UN and humanitarian agencies. Israel has also accused Hamas of stealing aid.

Reuters interviewed more than two dozen people, including humanitarian workers, Israeli military officials and truck drivers, in tracing the tortuous route that aid takes into Gaza in an effort to identify the chokepoints and reasons for delays of supplies. Reuters also reviewed UN and Israeli military statistics on aid shipments, as well as satellite images of the border crossing areas, which revealed the long lines of trucks.

Before the aid shipments enter Gaza, they undergo a series of Israeli checks, and a shipment approved at one stage of the process can later be rejected, according to 18 aid workers and UN officials involved in the aid effort. At one crossing from Israel into Gaza, goods are twice loaded off trucks and then reloaded onto other trucks that then carry the aid to warehouses in Gaza. The aid delivery process can also be complicated by competing international demands, with some countries wanting their contributions to be prioritized.
Aid that does make it into Gaza can be ransacked by desperate civilians, sometimes fall prey to armed gangs, or get held up by Israeli army checkpoints. Half the warehouses storing aid in Gaza are no longer operational after having been hit in the fighting.

“It’s upsetting watching these aid trucks go nowhere and vast humanitarian supplies sit in warehouses when you think about what’s happening, right now, to the people who need them,” said Paolo Pezzati, an Oxfam worker who recently visited the queue of aid trucks near the Egypt-Gaza border.

Before the war began, an average of 200 trucks carrying aid entered Gaza each day, according to UN figures. A further 300 trucks laden with commercial imports, including food, agricultural supplies and industrial materials, also entered each day via Israel. Since the start of the war, an average of around 100 trucks have entered Gaza daily, according to a review of UN and Israeli military statistics on aid shipments.

While the trucks struggle to get into Gaza, the need for aid has risen dramatically, both because of the vast number of displaced people and the devastation of key infrastructure in Israel’s assault. This includes the destruction of bakeries, markets, and farmland whose crops met some of Gaza’s food needs.

“Previous wars weren’t like this,” said Alaa al-Atar, a municipal official, referring to conflicts in Gaza. “There wasn’t the destruction of all sources of subsistence – homes, farmland, infrastructure. There’s nothing left to survive on, just aid,” said Atar, who was displaced from the north to the south of Gaza early in the war.

To meet its minimum needs, aid agencies and UN officials say Gaza currently requires 500 to 600 trucks a day, including humanitarian aid and the commercial supplies that were coming in before the war. That’s about four times the number of trucks getting in now.

In March there has been an uptick, with an average of 150 trucks entering Gaza each day.

Some deliveries are being made by international air drops and via sea, but they aren't making up for shortfalls on the land routes. In the first three weeks of March, the equivalent of some 50 truckloads of aid was airdropped and brought in by sea, a Reuters tally based on Israeli military statistics showed.

The recent food security report, known as the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), found that a lack of aid means almost all households in Gaza are skipping meals every day and adults are cutting back on meals so their children can eat. The situation is particularly dire in northern Gaza, it said, where in nearly two-thirds of households, “people went entire days and nights without eating at least 10 times in the last 30 days.”

A senior Hamas official said Israel is responsible for the inadequate aid flows. The “biggest threat” to the distribution of aid is Israel’s ongoing attacks in Gaza, Hamas official Bassem Naim told Reuters. “The biggest obstacle to getting the aid to the people who need it is the continued gunfire and the continued targeting of aid and those who are handling it,” he said.

WAITING IN THE DESERT

Before some of the aid begins its journey to Gaza, it is flown to Cairo or shipped by sea to Port Said, which borders Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, about 150 kms to the west of Al Arish. From there, it is trucked to the city of Al Arish, on the Mediterranean coast. Some aid is also flown directly to the Egyptian city.

Once in Cairo or Al Arish, the aid undergoes its first check. International agencies submit a detailed inventory of each shipment to the Israeli military via the UN for clearance. Israel has long banned “dual use” items that it says could be used by Hamas to make weapons.

Of 153 requests made to the Israeli authorities for goods to enter Gaza between Jan. 11 and March 15, 100 were cleared, 15 were rejected outright and another 38 were pending, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs told Reuters. UN officials didn’t specify whether a request referred to a specific number of trucks or volume of aid. It takes almost a month on average to get a response, according to minutes of a meeting of aid agencies seen by Reuters.

The Israeli military says it approves almost 99% of the Gaza-bound trucks it inspects and that once the goods are inside the enclave, it is the responsibility of the international aid organizations to distribute it. The inspection process “isn’t the impediment” to aid “getting into the Gaza Strip,” said Shimon Freedman, a spokesman for COGAT, the Israeli military branch that handles aid transfers.

Diplomatic wrangling by countries donating aid can also create snarls in the delivery process. UN officials told Reuters that because aid comes not only from international agencies but also directly from individual donor countries, the process of deciding which trucks go to the front of the queue can be thorny even before they depart Al Arish.

The Egyptian Red Crescent official said donor countries “drop off aid in Al Arish or at Al Arish airport and walk away and say, ‘We gave out aid to Gaza.’” It is the Red Crescent and Egyptian authorities who then bear the responsibility of getting the aid to Gaza, he said.

From Al Arish, the trucks make the 50-kilometer journey to the Rafah crossing point on the Egypt-Gaza border.

Next stop: Israel’s truck-scanning centers.

Once they reach the Rafah crossing, some trucks are then required to drive along the Egypt-Israel border for 40 kilometers to an inspection facility on the Israeli side called Nitzana. Here the goods are physically checked by Israeli soldiers who use scanning machines and sniffer dogs, according to UN and other aid agency staff.

Some items get rejected during the physical inspection, in particular ones Israel believes could be used by Hamas and other armed groups for military purposes. Some shipments carrying dual-use items are sent back to Al Arish. The same item that is let through one day, can be rejected on another day, UN officials and aid workers said.

UN agencies say solar panels, metal tent poles, oxygen tanks, generators and water purification equipment are among the items the military has rejected.

COGAT’S Freedman said there is a publicized list of what constitutes dual-use items, but there isn’t a “blanket ban” on these goods. If Israeli authorities “understand what exactly it is necessary for, we can coordinate it,” he said. But Israel wants to be sure that goods aren’t going to be “used by Hamas for terrorist activities,” he said.

The Israeli military says it can scan a total of 44 trucks an hour at Nitzana and at a crossing from Israel into Gaza where aid trucks are inspected, at Kerem Shalom. But aid agency officials say the actual number scanned is fewer. The military declined to say how many hours Nitzana and Kerem Shalom are open each day.

Once the trucks pass inspection at Nitzana, they make the 40-kilometer journey back to Rafah, where they wait to cross into Gaza.

In late January, groups of Israelis, including friends and relatives of the more than 130 people still being held hostage by Hamas, began protesting against the delivery of aid to Gaza. Between late January and early March, the protests effectively shut down either Nitzana or Kerem Shalom for a total of 16 days, according to aid agencies.

At the Kerem Shalom crossing, goods are unloaded from the scanned trucks and reloaded onto trucks that have been vetted by the Israeli army, according to UN and aid agency workers. These “sanitized” trucks then make a 1 kilometer journey to a warehouse inside Gaza where the aid is again offloaded. The goods are then placed on trucks driven by Palestinians and taken to mostly UN-run warehouses in Rafah.

Under growing international pressure, Israel earlier this month initiated a new route for the delivery of aid directly to northern Gaza, known as the 96th gate. By March 20, COGAT said at least 86 international aid trucks had entered via the new crossing.

“There is a sufficient amount of food entering Gaza every day,” said Col. Moshe Tetro, a COGAT official overseeing Gaza.

The new route was initiated “as part of a pilot in order to prevent Hamas from taking over the aid,” COGAT said in a post on social media site X. Freedman, though, said he didn’t have “specific evidence” he could share about Hamas pilfering aid.

Hamas official Naim rejected the accusation that the group was stealing aid. “We have been cooperating and are cooperating with every single state and humanitarian organization so that the aid reaches people in dire need,” he said.

AN ARDUOUS JOURNEY

Once inside Gaza, the aid shipments face more challenges.
Several convoys have been attacked on the stretch of road from Kerem Shalom to Gaza warehouses by people carrying crude weapons such as axes and box-cutters, according to UN officials and truck drivers. Deeper inside Gaza, others have been swarmed by crowds of people desperate for food.

In an incident that galvanized aid efforts, more than 100 people were killed in late February when a crowd descended on an aid convoy organized by Israel.
Security for food convoys traveling the short distance from the crossing points to warehouses in Rafah also deteriorated after several strikes by the Israeli military killed at least eight policemen in Gaza, according to UN officials. Israel says all police are members of Hamas.

“Whether they’re Hamas or not I don’t know, but they were doing a job for us in terms of crowd control,” said Jamie McGoldrick, a senior UN official. “The police are less willing to do that now.”

Aid agencies mostly now negotiate their own security with local communities, McGoldrick said.

Reuters reported recently that armed and masked men from an array of clans and factions in Gaza had begun providing security to aid convoys.

Police officers in Gaza “are Hamas, they are part of the Hamas terrorist organization,” COGAT’s Freedman said. Israel doesn’t target humanitarian convoys, “we try to assist them, but Hamas is our enemy.”

Storing aid in Gaza has also become a problem. Warehouses have been damaged by the fighting and occasionally looted. Of the 43 warehouses in Gaza that were operational before the war, only 22 are now working, according to the Logistics Cluster, a UN-run logistics facilitator for aid agencies.

In mid-March, an Israeli airstrike hit a UN food distribution center in southern Gaza, killing several people. Israel said it killed a Hamas commander in the attack. Hamas said the man targeted by Israel was a member of its police force.

From the warehouses, aid is delivered to southern Gaza, where the majority of the population is now located.

Making deliveries to northern Gaza is more fraught.

Roads to the north have been bombed by Israel and there are delays as trucks are held up or denied access at Israeli army checkpoints, say UN and other aid agency officials. Aid convoys are also often looted before reaching their destination by crowds of people desperate for food, UN officials said.

UN officials told Reuters that humanitarian agencies had made 158 requests to the Israeli military to deliver aid to northern Gaza from the beginning of the war to March 14. Of those, the military denied 57, they said.

COGAT’s Freedman said some requests to move aid inside Gaza have been rejected because aid agencies didn’t coordinate sufficiently with Israel.
“They weren't able to tell us exactly where that aid was going,” he said. “And if we don't know where it's going to, we don't know it's not going to end up in the hands of Hamas.”
In southern Gaza, residents are desperately waiting for aid.
“People have nothing to eat at all, nor do they have a place to stay, or a refuge,” said Suleiman al-Jaal, a local truck driver who said he has been attacked transporting aid in Gaza. “This is not a life. No matter how much aid they bring in, it’s not enough.”



Netanyahu’s Governing Coalition Is Fracturing. Here’s What It Means for Israel and Gaza

 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu walks in the Knesset, Israel's parliament, on the day of a vote over a possible expulsion of Ayman Odeh from parliament, in Jerusalem, July 14, 2025. (Reuters)
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu walks in the Knesset, Israel's parliament, on the day of a vote over a possible expulsion of Ayman Odeh from parliament, in Jerusalem, July 14, 2025. (Reuters)
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Netanyahu’s Governing Coalition Is Fracturing. Here’s What It Means for Israel and Gaza

 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu walks in the Knesset, Israel's parliament, on the day of a vote over a possible expulsion of Ayman Odeh from parliament, in Jerusalem, July 14, 2025. (Reuters)
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu walks in the Knesset, Israel's parliament, on the day of a vote over a possible expulsion of Ayman Odeh from parliament, in Jerusalem, July 14, 2025. (Reuters)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government suffered a serious blow on Tuesday when an ultra-Orthodox party announced it was bolting the coalition.

While this doesn’t immediately threaten Netanyahu’s rule, it could set in motion his government’s demise, although that could still be months away. It also could complicate efforts to halt the war in Gaza.

United Torah Judaism's two factions said they were leaving the government because of disagreements over a proposed law that would end broad exemptions for religious students from enlistment into the military.

Military service is compulsory for most Jewish Israelis, and the issue of exemptions has long divided the country. Those rifts have only widened since the start of the war in Gaza as demand for military manpower has grown and hundreds of soldiers have been killed.

The threat to the government “looks more serious than ever,” said Shuki Friedman, vice president of the Jewish People Policy Institute, a Jerusalem think tank.

Netanyahu is on trial for alleged corruption, and critics say he wants to hang on to power so that he can use his office as a bully pulpit to rally supporters and lash out against prosecutors and judges. That makes him all the more vulnerable to the whims of his coalition allies.

Here is a look at Netanyahu's political predicament and some potential scenarios:

The ultra-Orthodox are key partners

Netanyahu, Israel’s longest serving leader, has long relied on the ultra-Orthodox parties to prop up his governments.

Without UTJ, his coalition holds just 61 out of parliament’s 120 seats. That means Netanyahu will be more susceptible to pressure from other elements within his government, especially far-right parties who strongly oppose ending the war in Gaza.

The political shake up isn't likely to completely derail ceasefire talks, but it could complicate how flexible Netanyahu can be in his concessions to Hamas.

A second ultra-Orthodox party is also considering bolting the government over the draft issue. That would give Netanyahu a minority in parliament and make governing almost impossible.

The ultra-Orthodox military exemptions have divided Israel

A decades-old arrangement by Israel’s first prime minister granted hundreds of ultra-Orthodox men exemptions from compulsory Israeli service. Over the years, those exemptions ballooned into the thousands and created deep divisions in Israel.

The ultra-Orthodox say their men are serving the country by studying sacred Jewish texts and preserving centuries’ old tradition. They fear that mandatory enlistment will dilute adherents’ connection to the faith.

But most Jewish Israelis see the exemption as unfair, as well as the generous government stipends granted to many ultra-Orthodox men who study instead of work throughout adulthood. That bitterness has only worsened during nearly two years of war.

The politically powerful ultra-Orthodox parties have long had outsize influence in Israel’s fragmented political system and used that status to extract major concessions for their constituents.

But a court last year ruled Netanyahu’s government must enlist the ultra-Orthodox so long as there is no new law codifying the exemptions.

Netanyahu’s coalition has been trying to find a path forward on a new law. But his base is largely opposed to granting sweeping draft exemptions and a key lawmaker has stood in the way of giving the ultra-Orthodox a law they can get behind, prompting their exit.

The political shake up comes during Gaza ceasefire talks

The resignations don't take effect for 48 hours, so Netanyahu will likely spend the next two days seeking a compromise. But that won't be easy because the Supreme Court has said the old system of exemptions amounts to discrimination against the secular majority.

That does not mean the government will collapse.

Netanyahu's opponents cannot submit a motion to dissolve parliament until the end of the year because of procedural reasons. And with parliament's summer recess beginning later this month, the parties could use that time to find a compromise and return to the government.

Cabinet Minister Miki Zohar, from Netanyahu’s Likud party, said he was hopeful the religious party could be coaxed back to the coalition. “God willing, everything will be fine,” he said. A Likud spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Once the departures become official, Netanyahu will have a razor-thin majority. The far-right parties within it could threaten to leave the coalition, further weakening him, if he gives in to too many of Hamas' demands.

Hamas wants a permanent end to the war as part of any ceasefire deal. Netanyahu's hard-line partners are open to a temporary truce, but say the war cannot end until Hamas is destroyed.

If they or any other party leave the coalition, Netanyahu will have a minority government, and that will make it almost impossible to govern and likely lead to its collapse. But he could still find ways to approve a ceasefire deal, including with support from the political opposition.

Israel may be on the path toward early elections

Netanyahu could seek to shore up his coalition by appeasing the far-right and agreeing for now to just a partial, 60-day ceasefire with Hamas, promising his governing partners that he can still resume the war once it expires.

But Netanyahu is balancing those political constraints with pressure from the Trump administration, which is pressing Israel to wrap up the war.

Gayil Talshir, a political scientist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said she expects Netanyahu to work during those 60 days to shift the narrative away from the draft exemptions and the war in Gaza, toward something that could potentially give him an electoral boost – like an expansion of US-led normalization deals between Israel and Arab or Muslim countries.

Once the 60-day ceasefire is up, Netanyahu could bend to US pressure to end the war and bring home the remaining hostages in Gaza — a move most Israelis would support.

Elections are currently scheduled for October 2026. But if Netanyahu feels like he has improved his political standing, he may want to call elections before then.