Israel allows UN to bring armored vehicles, protection gear for its Gaza aid workers
Humanitarian coordinator says some communications equipment also approved, talks still ongoing over satellite internet access amid fear of Hamas abuse
The United Nations said on Monday that it will start bringing in more armored vehicles and personal protection equipment for its humanitarian aid operations in the Gaza Strip after receiving approval from Israeli authorities.
The approval was in response to a UN letter sent to Israel last month on safety and security in Gaza, said Scott Anderson, deputy humanitarian coordinator for the Gaza Strip and West Bank, as the war between Israel and Palestinian terror group Hamas enters its tenth month and law and order has broken down.
The UN has long complained of obstacles to getting aid into Gaza — Israel inspects and approves all trucks — and says it is also struggling to distribute aid amid “total lawlessness” within the enclave of 2.3 million people, where a global hunger monitor last month said there is a high risk of famine.
Israel says some supply issues are a matter of poor UN logistics that it is trying to facilitate aid shipments, but accuses Hamas of disrupting them.
Anderson said the UN was due to start bringing more armored vehicles and protection equipment into Gaza on Tuesday.
“Some communications equipment has also been approved,” he told reporters, like hand-held radios, but added that discussions are still continuing on a UN request for stable internet access.
The UN has said it wants communications that do not rely on cell phone towers because they are not reliable. However, Israeli authorities have security concerns about what Hamas could do if it accessed satellite internet service.
Last week, the Biden administration said that the US military’s humanitarian pier off the coast of Gaza, which has been hampered by bad weather and aid distribution problems, will shut down soon. The pier brought in 8,100 metric tons of aid to a marshaling area on Gaza’s shore since it started operating in May.
US officials have told the Reuters news agency that the pier operations could shift to the Israeli port of Ashdod.
The claim was backed up by the head of the US agency overseeing American humanitarian assistance worldwide, who said on Thursday that Israel has pledged to allow aid workers to move more quickly and safely throughout the Gaza Strip.
Samantha Power, administrator of the US Agency for International Development, told the Associated Press that Israel has been taking new steps to increase the flow of aid through the port of Ashdod, giving donors a new option for delivering aid even as the pier is shuttered.
The war started on October 7, when Hamas led a devastating cross-border attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians. Israel responded with a military offensive to destroy Hamas, topple its Gaza regime, and free 251 people abducted by terrorists and taken as hostages to Gaza during the Hamas attack.
Israel has previously acknowledged some inadvertent military strikes on humanitarian workers, and has denied allegations of others.
‘Crime families’
Anderson said the UN needed to bring in aid in the right quantity and quality, but several factors “continue to stand in our way.” He listed problems including restrictions on movement, aid worker safety, unpredictable working hours, communications challenges and a lack of fuel.
“And we’ve seen a complete breakdown of law and order and we’ve seen essentially what are crime families preventing the free movement of aid into Gaza to assist people,” he said.
“The truck drivers that we use have been regularly threatened or assaulted… they’ve become less and less willing, understandably, to move assistance from the border crossings to our warehouses and then onto people that are in need,” Anderson said.
He said the UN was getting between 25 and 70 aid trucks a day into northern Gaza, but there was no commercial access.
Anderson said in southern Gaza, “We’ve been barely able to hit 100 trucks on a good day over the last week because of law and order problems,” but that commercial deliveries were doing a little better “but they pay essentially protection money to the families in the south and they also have armed guards.”
Aid officials say about 600 trucks of humanitarian and commercial supplies are needed in Gaza daily to meet the needs of the population.
He said the UN was “in talks with everybody about trying to get some sort of police force established” and in the meantime was working with the families that are hindering aid deliveries to try and address the problem.
“It’s a few families that are trying to take advantage of this opportunity and that’s why I’m confident if we get police back at work that they can address the issue,” Anderson said.
