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16 March 2024

Israel Allows Aid Directly Into North Gaza, Raising Hopes for More

Adam Rasgon, Lars Dolder, Victoria Kim and Michael Levenson

Israel has allowed a small convoy carrying food to enter northern Gaza directly through an Israeli border crossing for the first time since the war began on Oct. 7, as global pressure intensifies to let more desperately needed aid into the territory, where hundreds of thousands are at risk of starvation.

The Israeli military said that it had allowed six trucks carrying supplies from the United Nations World Food Program to enter the northern Gaza Strip on Tuesday, not far from the Israeli village of Be’eri, where more people were killed in the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack than in any other community. The World Food Program said that its delivery, containing food for 25,000 people, was its first since Feb. 20 to the northern part of the enclave.

For five months, aid groups had been able to reach northern Gaza only by entering through one of two southern border crossings, and then attempting a difficult and hazardous drive to the north. Few had successfully made the trip to distribution points. After the convoy on Tuesday cleared Israeli inspection, it crossed into Gaza through a gate on a security fence that had not previously been used for aid deliveries, the Israeli military said.

The food was only a sliver of what would be needed to feed hungry Gazans suffering from extreme food shortages, particularly in the north, where the Israeli army invaded in late October and where some residents have resorted to eating leaves and animal feed. Little aid has reached northern Gaza after major relief groups suspended operations there, citing lawlessness, poor road conditions and Israeli restrictions on convoys.

To avoid the risk of crowds jumping on trucks to grab supplies, the aid from the northern convoy was distributed quickly and close to the fence, said Abeer Etefa, a spokeswoman for the World Food Program. The convoy included one truck full of flour and five carrying food packages. The delivery came after six days of intensive negotiations, she said.

“The significance of this is that it revives the hope of continued access to northern Gaza over land,” Ms. Etefa said. “It’s a good step, but we just hope that it doesn’t end up being a one-off.”

Israeli officials did not say when more trucks might enter northern Gaza directly from Israel. But Shimon Freedman, a spokesman for COGAT, the Israeli agency overseeing aid deliveries into Gaza, called the convoy a “success” and said that “hopefully soon” more trucks would follow.


Lining up for food aid in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, on Tuesday.

Even as Israel let the aid directly into the north, Philippe Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA, the main U.N. agency providing support for Palestinians in Gaza, said that Israeli forces had struck a food distribution center in the southern city of Rafah, killing one agency worker and injuring 22 others. He said the center was hit even though UNRWA shares the coordinates of its facilities with all parties to the war.

“Attacks against U.N. facilities, convoys and personnel have become commonplace, in blatant disregard to international humanitarian law,” Mr. Lazzarini said.

The Israeli military, in a statement, said the strike on Wednesday “precisely targeted and eliminated a terrorist,” but made no mention of others being injured. It identified the target as Muhammad Abu Hasna, who “coordinated the activities of various Hamas units,” and supplied information on Israeli military positions to Hamas fighters.

As Israel pursues its goal of eradicating Hamas, its military said on Wednesday that it had killed a senior Hamas operative in an airstrike in southern Lebanon, the latest in a series of targeted killings carried out in Lebanon after Oct. 7.

The Hamas official, Hadi Ali Mustafa, was “a significant operative in Hamas’s department responsible for its international terrorist activities,” the Israeli military said in a statement. It added that he had been involved in attacks “against Israeli and Jewish targets in various countries around the world.” It provided no further details, and its claims could not be independently verified.

In a statement, Hamas’s military wing confirmed that Mr. Mustafa had been killed but gave no indication of his role within the organization. The Israeli airstrike, on a car near the southern Lebanese coastal city of Tyre, also killed a passing motorcyclist, Lebanese state media reported.

Israel has faced mounting pressure to allow more aid into Gaza, including from the United States, which last week outlined a plan to deliver supplies by sea. On Tuesday, a ship carrying more than 200 tons of food for the territory left Cyprus, in the first test of the marine route. Military planes from several nations, including the United States, have also parachuted aid into Gaza.

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said on Wednesday that he had spoken with officials from Cyprus, Britain, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar about the maritime corridor for ships carrying humanitarian supplies. He said that land routes remain the best way to get large amounts of aid into Gaza, but only if Israel opens more border crossings.

“Israel still needs to open as many access points as possible and keep them open to make sure that things are flowing in a sustainable way,” he said at a news conference in Washington.

Aid organizations have said that a laborious Israeli inspection process has slowed down crucial humanitarian assistance.


A food storage and distribution center in Rafah, which a U.N. aid agency said was damaged in an airstrike on Wednesday.

Mr. Lazzarini said that one aid truck was turned away this week because it was carrying scissors in medical kits for children, which had been added to a list of items the Israeli authorities consider to be of “dual use,” or having both civilian and military purposes.

COGAT accused Mr. Lazzarini of lying, saying that it was in constant contact with the United Nations and had not been notified of the denial. The Israeli agency said that only 1.5 percent of aid trucks trying to enter the territory had been turned away.

Mr. Lazzarini was the latest official to say that the Israeli inspections were keeping aid from reaching Gaza’s 2.2 million people. Last week, Britain’s foreign minister, David Cameron, told British lawmakers that “too many” goods were being turned away for being dual use, including items that are medically necessary.

A member of the British Parliament said this month that Israel had turned away 1,350 water filters and 2,560 solar lights provided by the British government because they were considered a threat.

Miriam Marmur, director of public advocacy at Gisha, an Israeli nonprofit that works to protect the free movement of Palestinians, said that Israel’s list included broad categories that can encompass thousands of items, making it difficult to know what was prohibited. Many items that have been turned away are not explicitly listed, she said.

“This uncertainty follows years of obfuscation on what exactly qualifies as dual use from Israel’s perspective, as well as when and how those items can be brought into Gaza,” she said.

Israel has maintained a list of dual-use items that require special permission to be brought into Gaza as a part of its blockade of the enclave, which began years ago and became much stricter after the Oct. 7 attack. For many years, the list and approval process were shrouded from public view. The Israeli authorities disclosed the list only after a legal battle, according to Gisha, which petitioned a court to require that it be released.


A pier in southern Gaza that could be used to deliver humanitarian aid, on Wednesday.

Aid groups have said that a single item determined to be of dual use can result in an entire truck being turned away. They have said that sometimes they are not told what the banned item was, or why it was rejected.

COGAT has said that many of the trucks that are turned away are repacked and enter later, and that any bottleneck is a result of the aid groups’ capacity to handle distribution, rather than Israeli limitations.

In January, two U.S. senators who visited a border crossing between Egypt and Gaza said they saw a warehouse near the crossing filled with rejected items, including tents, oxygen concentrators, water-testing kits, water filters, solar-powered refrigerators and medical kits used for delivering babies.

Senator Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon, said after the trip that Israel’s inspections were necessary but that the delays they caused had unacceptable consequences.

“If it takes a week when aid is desperately needed, that means people are shorted food, clean water and medical supplies,” he said on the Senate floor at the time.

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