Gaza Aid Distribution Struggles amid Overcrowding, Debris, Lack of Fuel

 Palestinians look for survivors following Israeli airstrike in Nusseirat refugee camp, Gaza Strip, Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2023. (AP)
Palestinians look for survivors following Israeli airstrike in Nusseirat refugee camp, Gaza Strip, Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2023. (AP)
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Gaza Aid Distribution Struggles amid Overcrowding, Debris, Lack of Fuel

 Palestinians look for survivors following Israeli airstrike in Nusseirat refugee camp, Gaza Strip, Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2023. (AP)
Palestinians look for survivors following Israeli airstrike in Nusseirat refugee camp, Gaza Strip, Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2023. (AP)

Distribution of food and medical supplies is faltering in Gaza due to a chronic lack of fuel, looting of stores, the choking of streets with rubble from Israeli shelling and overcrowding caused by displacement of civilians.

And despite an uptick in the trickle of supplies, the number of aid trucks entering Gaza -- currently averaging 14 daily -- remains tiny compared to the 400 trucks seen daily in normal times for a population of 2.3 million now desperate for essentials like bread, aid officials say.

UN Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) said on Monday that over the past day it had delivered hundreds of tons of flour to 50 Gaza bakeries, helping to lower bread prices by half, and to shelters hosting hundreds of thousands of people.

But the agency, which runs Gaza's largest aid operation, said a break-in by hungry Gazans on Sunday at its second largest warehouse was likely to further complicate its work.

A logistics base at the Rafah border crossing that is vital to aid distribution has become harder to operate because 8,000 displaced people are sheltering at it.

The agency has also seen 67 of its workers killed in Gaza since Oct. 7, the highest number of UN staff killed in any conflict in such a short span of time, it said.

UNRWA spokesperson Juliette Touma said the agency's priority was providing aid to 150 shelters for at least 670,000 displaced people, while another priority was providing wheat flour to bakeries.

"We're way beyond our capacity" to do anything more than that, she added.

The number of displaced is four times more than UNRWA had planned for before the war as a worst-case scenario, she said.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said their Gaza City warehouses had suffered "severe damage" on Monday and were out of service.

Israel is blockading Gaza and refuses to allow in fuel, saying it could be used by the Hamas militant group for their military goals.

"The constant threat of bombardment, debris, and lack of fuel makes roads extremely dangerous and inaccessible in many parts of the Gaza Strip," said Jonathan Crickx, communications chief for UNICEF Palestine.

While UNICEF is bringing in medical supplies, he said, "distribution is becoming more and more difficult".

Sanitation ‘atrocious’

Aid flows to Gaza have fallen sharply since Israel started shelling the Palestinian enclave in response to an attack by the Hamas militant group on Oct. 7 that killed 1,400 people.

The death toll from the bombardment has caused international uproar. Medical authorities in Hamas-run Gaza said on Tuesday that 8,525 people including 3,542 minors had been killed.

Distribution is particularly hard in northern Gaza, the main focus of Israel's military operation, aid officials say, and some have halted all deliveries.

World Health Organization (WHO) spokesperson Christian Lindmeier said on Tuesday it had sent no further aid to northern Gaza hospitals since Oct. 24, citing a lack of security guarantees.

A public health catastrophe is imminent, he said, amid the mass displacement and damage to water and sanitation infrastructure.

He said there had been 82 attacks on healthcare facilities in Gaza since the conflict began on Oct. 7, with 491 people killed in the attacks, including 16 on duty health workers, and 28 ambulances damaged or destroyed.

Rick Brennan, the WHO regional emergencies director, told Reuters that with 1.4 million people displaced in such a densely populated territory, conditions were dire.

"The sanitation is atrocious, I mean I was just talking to an UNRWA colleague, she said the living conditions are sub-human. Where do people go to the bathroom? How do you remove all waste?"

He said such a condition was ripe for the outbreak of diseases such as diarrhea and respiratory and skin infections such as scabies.

In Cairo, US Special Envoy David Satterfield, who has been negotiating with Israel and Egypt over aid deliveries, said providing humanitarian aid was critically important for Gaza, whose inhabitants say food and water have almost run out.

"This is a society on edge and desperate... and the UN implementers must be able to demonstrate that aid is not episodic," he said in a briefing for reporters.

Aid flows from Egypt have been slowed by an inspection system agreed with Israel in which trucks drive from Egypt's Rafah crossing along the Egypt-Israel border before returning towards Gaza. UNRWA's Touma called the system "way too cumbersome".



Iran-Israel War: A Lifeline for Netanyahu?

FILE - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a ceremony on the eve of Israel's Remembrance Day for fallen soldiers at the Yad LaBanim Memorial in Jerusalem, on April 29, 2025. (Abir Sultan/Pool Photo via AP, File)
FILE - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a ceremony on the eve of Israel's Remembrance Day for fallen soldiers at the Yad LaBanim Memorial in Jerusalem, on April 29, 2025. (Abir Sultan/Pool Photo via AP, File)
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Iran-Israel War: A Lifeline for Netanyahu?

FILE - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a ceremony on the eve of Israel's Remembrance Day for fallen soldiers at the Yad LaBanim Memorial in Jerusalem, on April 29, 2025. (Abir Sultan/Pool Photo via AP, File)
FILE - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a ceremony on the eve of Israel's Remembrance Day for fallen soldiers at the Yad LaBanim Memorial in Jerusalem, on April 29, 2025. (Abir Sultan/Pool Photo via AP, File)

The Iran-Israel war has helped strengthen Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu domestically and overseas, just as his grip on power looked vulnerable.

On the eve of launching strikes on Iran, his government looked to be on the verge of collapse, with a drive to conscript ultra-Orthodox Jews threatening to scupper his fragile coalition.

Nearly two years on from Hamas's unprecedented attack in 2023, Netanyahu was under growing domestic criticism for his handling of the war in Gaza, where dozens of hostages remain unaccounted for, said AFP.

Internationally too, he was coming under pressure including from longstanding allies, who since the war with Iran began have gone back to expressing support.

Just days ago, polls were predicting Netanyahu would lose his majority if new elections were held, but now, his fortunes appear to have reversed, and Israelis are seeing in "Bibi" the man of the moment.

– 'Reshape the Middle East' –

For decades, Netanyahu has warned of the risk of a nuclear attack on Israel by Iran -- a fear shared by most Israelis.

Yonatan Freeman, a geopolitics expert at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said Netanyahu's argument that the pre-emptive strike on Iran was necessary draws "a lot of public support" and that the prime minister has been "greatly strengthened".

Even the opposition has rallied behind him.

"Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is my political rival, but his decision to strike Iran at this moment in time is the right one," opposition leader Yair Lapid wrote in a Jerusalem Post op-ed.

A poll published Saturday by a conservative Israeli channel showed that 54 percent of respondents expressed confidence in the prime minister.

The public had had time to prepare for the possibility of an offensive against Iran, with Netanyahu repeatedly warning that Israel was fighting for its survival and had an opportunity to "reshape the Middle East."

During tit-for-tat military exchanges last year, Israel launched air raids on targets in Iran in October that are thought to have severely damaged Iranian air defenses.

Israel's then-defense minister Yoav Gallant said the strikes had shifted "the balance of power" and had "weakened" Iran.

"In fact, for the past 20 months, Israelis have been thinking about this (a war with Iran)," said Denis Charbit, a political scientist at Israel's Open University.

Since Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, Netanyahu has ordered military action in Gaza, against the Iran-backed Hezbollah group in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen, as well as targets in Syria where long-time leader Bashar al-Assad fell in December last year.

"Netanyahu always wants to dominate the agenda, to be the one who reshuffles the deck himself -- not the one who reacts -- and here he is clearly asserting his Churchillian side, which is, incidentally, his model," Charbit said.

"But depending on the outcome and the duration (of the war), everything could change, and Israelis might turn against Bibi and demand answers."

– Silencing critics –

For now, however, people in Israel see the conflict with Iran as a "necessary war," according to Nitzan Perelman, a researcher specialized in Israel at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in France.

"Public opinion supports this war, just as it has supported previous ones," she added.

"It's very useful for Netanyahu because it silences criticism, both inside the country and abroad."

In the weeks ahead of the Iran strikes, international criticism of Netanyahu and Israel's military had reached unprecedented levels.

After more than 55,000 deaths in Gaza, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, and a blockade that has produced famine-like conditions there, Israel has faced growing isolation and the risk of sanctions, while Netanyahu himself is the subject of an international arrest warrant for alleged war crimes.

But on Sunday, two days into the war with Iran, the Israeli leader received a phone call from European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, while Foreign Minister Gideon Saar has held talks with numerous counterparts.

"There's more consensus in Europe in how they see Iran, which is more equal to how Israel sees Iran," explained Freeman from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Tuesday that Israel was doing "the dirty work... for all of us."

The idea that a weakened Iran could lead to regional peace and the emergence of a new Middle East is appealing to the United States and some European countries, according to Freeman.

But for Perelman, "Netanyahu is exploiting the Iranian threat, as he always has."